


Waking Beauty

by DaemonMeg



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work, Sleeping Beauty (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Biracial Character, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Retellings, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Gen, Magic, POV Character of Color, POV Original Female Character, Slow Build, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-29
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-01-05 19:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaemonMeg/pseuds/DaemonMeg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As an orphan and a serving girl, Anne always felt like an outsider.  But when she wakes up to discover the princess and her people are trapped in a sleeping curse, she must leave the castle to find rescue.  Her journey takes longer than anticipated, and in the process of searching for a way to break the spell, she learns the truth of her own origins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne wakes up in a castle cursed with a deathlike sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yavannie made a beautiful doodle for my first chapter. You can find it [here](http://yavannies.tumblr.com/post/72226480843/hey-snkrfnd-i-did-a-thing-doodle-inspired-by).

Anne awoke in the twilight of her tower room to utter silence.  Normally, no matter the time of day or night, the castle staff could be heard bustling among the walls and stairwells as they went about their business.  She lay there, stretching the kinks from her calf, before slipping between the bedclothes and setting foot to the floor.  The rushes were rough beneath her feet, and cold.  She felt a twig snap beneath her step, and the odor of dust rose up to meet her. 

Something wasn't right.

Quietly, she crept to the adjoining door that led to her lady's chamber.  No light shone at the entrance, not even the glow of embers burned low.  Lifting the latch and peeking around the jamb of the door, she could see the hearth dark and cold, without even the inkling of red-orange coals.  At her lady's window, a light dusting of snow traipsed across the stone sill, as though frosted with sugar. 

Something wasn't right.

With two bounds, Anne found herself at her lady's bedside and pulled aside the heavy draperies hanging from the rails above her four-post bed.  She heaved a sigh of relief to see her fair lady still abed, smiling softly in her sleep.  The sleeping girl lay in a soft pink night dress with scalloped sleeves, white silken cords tying the bodice closed. The skirt of the night dress was rucked up over her knees.  Her lady was always a restless sleeper.  Anne could see one of her doe-skin slippers had come untied overnight and slipped down beneath the coverlet.  The soft suede of the slipper was dyed a light pink to match her lady's nightdress.

She was still bothered by the eerie silence of the tower and the surrounding grounds, though, and Anne gently rocked the shoulder of her lady Margaret.  With her lady awake, Anne knew she would feel emminently better.  But Margaret would not wake.  She shook her lady's shoulders more roughly, beginning to sob in panic.  Her lady would not wake.  Before long, Anne found herself astride the prone form of the little mistress of the house, shaking her to and fro, in the hopes of raising her from her unnatural slumber.  Little Margaret's head flopped on her narrow shoulders, and her little rosebud mouth opened, but no sound escaped. 

Something was definitely not right.

Anne looked around the tower room once more, and this time, she took the time to really _see,_ as many things bothered her about the chamber.  The rushes.  The rushes were dry and rough and dusty.  Rushes were laid anew each evening for her mistress, smelling of balsam and fir and rosemary scattered among the grasses for added fragrance, although the rest of the castle made do with only sweet flag rushes.  The sill.  The sill was dusted with snow and icicles hung from the hinges of the shutters.  It was only autumn, and much too early for frost.  Spiderwebs adorned the rails above her lady's bed, as though the finest lace had been imported and hung above the bedclothes for little Margaret's enjoyment.

Anne bolted from the girl's chamber, and sprung for the stairs, spiraling downwards towards the nursery, past the schoolroom, past the wardrobes, past the guardsmen.  As she rounded each landing, Anne stumbled over maids and workmen, guards, and castle cats.  She paused as she encountered each member of the staff, shaking them violently as she had Margaret, only to rush on, crying for help.  She finally arrived on the ground floor, and flung open the bailey door, only to be bombarded by snow and frozen leaves that had piled against the entrance. 

She waded out into the drift, the bailey lit only by the waning moon and low lying clouds, and pulled her wrapper closer around her shoulders.  Beneath the silvery light of the dying moon, Anne stood facing the wind.  Her dark hair, pulled free from its ties in the night, streamed behind her past her shoulders in tight curls.  _I must look a ghost, out here in my wrapper and night dress._   A harsh gust bit through the thin fabric of her wrapper, making her shiver.  The bleached linen of her shift was stark against her rich golden brown skin and black hair.

Everyone.  Everyone was held beneath the wicked, unnatural sleep, from which they would not wake.  Anne stood and stared across at the top of the wall.  In the strange half light of the new morning, she could just make out the slumped forms of the guardsmen draped against the crenellations.  When her feet began to burn, she hopped up from the drift, and rubbed life back into her frozen soles.  Straightening up, Anne marched back through the bailey door, pulled it shut behind her, dropping the bar into place, and bolted back up the stairs.  She didn't know which burned more, her feet from the snow, or her lungs from all the running up stairs.

Back in her lady's tower room, Anne paced for what seemed hours.  The moon did not continue its circuit across the sky, nor did the clouds pass by the courtyard.  It seemed to her as if the world hung in stillness, waiting for something.  Well, she wouldn't wait.  She needed to _do_ something.  Anne grabbed her basket from her little room and began to gather up the dried rushes.  The grasses were brittle in her hands, and crumbled away to nothing.  She had better luck with the balsam branches, bunching them into an improvised broom.  Anne used it to sweep away the snow from the sill, and she pulled the shutters closed on the lady's room.  One of the hinges busted as she pulled on the shutter, and she used the leather thong she normally used to tie her braid to hold it back together.

Anne continued in this manner for some days, or nights, or however the time passed.  She spent her free time, as it now was all her own time, making do with simple errands around the motte and bailey.  At first, she just tidied up Margaret's room.  The little girl was only eight summers old, Anne did not feel safe leaving her alone in this unnatural state.  She often went to her bedside to check on her lady, brushing her golden curls, arranging the bedclothes, keeping a fire lit in the hearth to hold back the cold night.  Since Anne could not count the passing hours, she worked until she was tired, and slept until she woke.  Only, every time she woke, the moon was still waning, and the same silver-lit, low hanging clouds threatened to burst over the courtyard. 

As the time moved on, Anne ventured further out into the castle.  Sometimes, she would reposition a sleeping cook, or lay down a slumped guard.  Thankfully, it seemed as though no accidents had occured, and Anne figured whatever cast them all to sleep had not come upon them suddenly.  Otherwise, she was like to find a broken form at the bottom of a staircase somewhere.  When hunger called, Anne made her way to the larder in the upper kitchens.  Surprisingly, the food was well preserved, and she glutted herself on cheeses and dried sausages and gnawed on the occasional root when she felt guilty about the savory meals in which she so often indulged.

Mostly, Anne went about her day completing chores as if the castle were still abustle with daily life.  She didn't know what else to do except for wait for some change to arrive on its own.  One time, she crept into the throne room and pronounced royal decrees over the slumbering figures of the court.  Somewhere, she heard something fall with a clatter, and ran for her life from the throne room as if the king himself were to awake and discover her follies.  Three days later, she discovered a chair leg had broken in the stable, dropping a stable hand to the floor, sprawling him in the mildewy straw.

Once Anne had made the rounds of the castle, and played her fill running through the quiet corridors, she found herself standing once more in Margaret's little tower room.  She was only two years older than the little princess, though a hand taller.  Again, she went to her lady's bed, and shook her shoulders.  It was routine, now.  Anne went through the motions of waking her lady every morning.  This time, Anne paused.  She really looked this time at the appearance of her hands on her lady's shoulders.  In the twilight of the tower bedroom, in the flickering shadows from the fire Anne always kept lit now, her hand was black against the skin of her little princess.  With a quick _snick_ , Anne clipped a lock of hair from her head using the kitchen knife she always kept tucked in the waistband of her apron.  She did the same to a lock of Margaret's hair.  Her nimble fingers made quick work, and in moments both little girls sported braids of contrasting colors.  Her dark, curly hair was braided into Margaret's golden waves, and a bright yellow lock was tucked in amongst her own braids, standing out like a ray of sunshine.  Rummaging in the trunk at the end of the lady's bed, Anne brought forth two ribbons made of the brightest silk.  She used a pink one, her lady's favorite color, to tie Margaret's hair, and a green one on her own head.

As she tied the last bow, she knelt there next to the little girl who had been her companion and playmate all these years.  Her hands shook, and a tear dripped from her chin and landed with a _plop_ on her wrist while she still held the end of the braid.  "I promise," she whispered, leaning her forehead down onto Margaret's.  "I promise to come back.  I promise to find help.  I'll find you a knight or a wizard or a good fairy."  Margaret had always liked those tales best.  "I'll find a way to wake you up."  Anne was done waiting for rescue to come on its own.  She would have to find a cure for the sleeping castle on her own.

 

Going on an adventure wasn't easy.  Anne had been packing and unpacking for days.  She tried to remember what the hunters took with them when they ranged into the forest for game.  It was hard for her to remember.  When she and Margaret would watch the hunting parties from the balcony overlooking the bailey, they would look at the fine uniforms and the cute, barking hounds.  She never paid attention to what went into their packs.  At one time, she had three huge satchels ready to take with her, but all the horses and donkeys and mules and goats and sheep and cows were fast asleep in the stables and barn.  Finally, Anne settled on just one bag.  Large and heavy enough to have the supplies she would need, but light enough that, as a girl of ten summers, she could carry it.  Into the sack, she tossed a blanket and extra boots, a plain riding dress and leather thongs, a change of underclothes and some boys breeches.  Inside a paper wrap, she included bread, cheese, and jerky-all stolen from the larder.  As she filched the food, she apologized to the slumbering cook, Bess, who still clutched a wooded spatula in hand as she slept.  At a last second thought, she ran back and filled an oiled bag with flour.  A pound of flour would last her longer than a pound of bread, after all.  She made one last tour of the stables, grabbing various tools she thought might come in handy, along with a length of rope to string the bag over her shoulders.

It was time.

She crossed the bailey one last time.  _Don't look back.  Don't look back._ Anne could feel eyes on her as she moved the last few yards toward the outer wall, although she knew for certain there wasn't anyone awake to watch.  She wasn't strong enough to turn the crank that raised the portcullis, so she settled for slinking through the sentry door.  It was eerie going beyond the walls after dark, but since she woke that fateful night, it was always dark.  It was her first time beyond the walls, and she had difficulty pushing the door open.  When she squeezed out beyond, she realized the cause.  The road and fields beyond the outer walls were covered with brambles.  And they weren't the short, hedgerow sort of brambles.  The thorns reached up and up and up, topping even the height of the watchtowers.  What was worse, was she was unable to see beneath the thorns interlaced overhead.  The branches were woven so thick, the moonlight, though bright in the bailey, couldn't penetrate through to light her path.  Anne slunk back through the sentry door and grabbed a torch from a wall sconce.  After a few strikes of her flint, she was able to light the torch, blowing the embers to bring the flames to life.  With a second thought, she rummaged in the guard's room, and found oil, wick, and a lamp.  On the shelves, she discovered panes to add to the sides of the lamp that could shutter the light or focus it as needs may be.

Set once more, Anne trumped out past the sentries, reaching up to pat a guard on the shoulder as she walked past.  It was just one of countless goodbyes she'd given the past few days.  Prepared with her lamp, Anne extinguished her torch to be used later.  Past the gate, she saw now the tight weaves formed by the thorns.  Luckily, she was bundled up in thick wool and a leather cape to ward off the chill of the winter.  The sharp barbs dug into the oiled cape, leaving long scratches.  She felt them pull at her braids like fingers, and stray locks sprung free, framing her dark face in a halo of black ringlets.  She had brought a muff to keep her hands warm, but Anne found she needed both hands to push the branches from her path as she wove her way between the thorns.  Instead, she pushed the fur ruff over her right wrist, and did the best she could with both hands lost in oversized mittens.  Occasionally, her woolen skirt, as green as the ribbon in her bicolor braid, would pull at a low hanging vine or a barb as long as her hand would snag the leather breeches she wore beneath.

The snow was not as deep here as it was in the courtyard, but it was still deep enough to soak the soles of her boots.  Luckily, the drifts had not frosted over, and she didn't have to worry about stepping through an icy crust.  Anne slipped a mirrored pane into one panel of the lamp to help focus her light, and the going was easier from there.  As she walked further from the castle, she noted the snow grew less deep.  Finally, Anne found herself crunching on frozen ground lightly dusted with frost.  She didn't know how long she walked, as the light never changed.  Her path she made through the brambles was and endless tunnel of darkness, and she had no sense of time.  Before long, Anne felt her lips crack with the cold, and her cheeks burned as they lost feeling.  She paused once to bring a small jar of deer tallow from her pack.  She smeared a small bit of the salve upon her windchapped cheeks and mouth and resisted the urge to lick her lips.  Almost immediately, she felt relief from the pain of her cracked skin, and she resumed her trek though the brambles.

When she found herself blacking out while walking, Anne knew it was time to sleep.  At least the ground was no longer covered in a foot of snow.  The woody stems of the brambles grew too close together for her to risk an open flame, so she made do without.  Her leather cloak served as a bed roll, and she pulled a felt blanket from her sack to cover up with.  At least the felt was water proof, so that she would be protected in case of rain or snow.  She pillowed her head on her arm, and pulled her knees in to her body to keep warm.  Sometime in the night, Anne pulled the fur muff from her wrist and slipped it around her booted feet.  When that didn't work, she pulled off her boots, and was so exhausted at that point that she struggled with the knee high laces.  Once her stockinged feet were free, she wiggled her toes a bit, chafing them between her mittened hands, and shoved them together inside the muff.  _Much better._ Anne didn't understand why, but her feet were warmer without the boots on her feet.

When she woke, it was more of the same.  She had no idea if it was morning, as it had been so long since she'd seen the sunrise.  She pulled a chunk of bread from a loaf and swallowed it with some white cheese.  It had snowed some more while she slept, and she lapped up a handful in lieu of drinking from her skin.  As she packed away the felt blanket and swirled her leather cloak back around her shoulders, Anne felt the blisters on her feet.  She had walked more yesterday than all her time in the castle.  Even playing in the nursery with Margaret or running through the bailey with the younger children didn't take the toll on her feet as the past day had.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, her days and nights were marked only by when she was hungry or when she was tired, much as it had been in the castle surrounded by the sleeping inhabitants.  She had slept three times and almost run out of lamp oil by the time she began to see the sky through the thorns.  When she was younger, she knew she would have been frightened of traveling alone.  However, she had been alone in the castle for some time, surrounded by the unnatural sleeping inhabitants.  If she were honest, this was the most well rested she'd been some time.  In some ways, she had always felt watched, as though there was someone just out of the corner of her eye or around the next turn in the halls.  Lady Margaret's castle was filled with ghosts, and Anne had not felt comfortable there since the moment she awoke to find all her friends asleep.

Two days.  Two days she spent walking in twilight.  At least, she reckoned it was two days because she slept twice before she reached the wall of fog.  She knew she still was going in the right direction, as she followed the ruts from wagon wheels beneath the monstrous shrubs.  She ran out of bread the first day she walked into the mist.  It grew unnaturally bright inside the fog, the air feeling heavy in her lungs.  It grew hard for her to breathe, as it did whenever she climbed down to the catacombs.  Anne didn't even need to use her lamp or torch, as the air around her seemed to glow with a light of its own.  When she finally stumbled forth from the wall of fog, she pulled her hood down low over her eyes.  It had been so long since she'd seen the sun, and Anne's steps faltered a bit as she adjusted to it.

It was a bit disorienting to be outside the wall and in daylight.  She bent forward, hands on her knees, and let slip the pack to the ground.  When she better felt herself, Anne turned to survey the way she'd come.  The fog stretched to either side and as high in the sky as she could see, and seemed to her to be a roiling mass of thunder clounds, lit by sporadic sparks of lightning at times.  If she had seen this from the start of her journey, Anne doubted she ever would have left the motte and bailey castle to begin with.  Turning back towards the road, she saw a whole new world.  Gone was the frost and snow seen so often on the castle grounds and beneath the brambles.  Out here, the world was alive with summer.  A few lazy bumbles zoomed around the field to the south of the road, and karst boulders littered the slope on the north as it rolled upwards towards some low foothills.  She faltered forward a few more yards, tottering on her feet as a colt would, newly foaled, and came to a stop beneath the spreading branches of an old tree.  Behind her, Anne dragged her pack in the dirt, lacking the energy to hoist it up over her shoulder again.

Now that she was free of the mist and the thorns and the sleeping castle, Anne slunk down on the moss beneath the tree, hugging her knees to her chest.  She might have made it through the wall of brambles and fog, but she was nowhere near finding help for her friend.  In the sunlight and summer heat, she ripped off her mittens and threw her leather cloak to the ground.  In the light of day, she could see her nails were cracked and broken from pushing aside thorns and vines for days on end.  She turned her hands palm up and stared at the brown skin cracked from the cold and lined with dirt in the creases in her palms.  Her black curls had worked free from her braids and stuck out from under her headscarf in a kinky brush.  Anne began pulling the sweetgrass that grew nearby and began scrubbing the dirt from her palms and wiping the clods from the suede of her boots.  "I promise you."  The words came out as a whisper.  Anne was still sitting beneath the tree, but faced towards the wall of mist and thorns.  There was no one to hear her words, but she repeated them anyway.  "I promise you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Free from the confines of the castle and bramble wall, Anne searches for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very big thank you to [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie), who wonderfully volunteered to beta read for me.

_The porcelain clinked quietly as Anne refreshed Margaret's tea.  The little girl held her cup with both hands, afraid she would spill a drop on the ivory lace covering their table in the nursery.  Beneath the lacework, the round oaken table was spread with a pink damask cloth that reached to the floor and obscured the legs of the table.  Sunlight dappled in through the high windows, tinted green as the sun shone through the branches of the twisted apple tree that grew in the bailey.  Tapestries hung about the rough hewn walls of the tower, softening the sounds, and imparting a little comfort in an otherwise harsh room.  The rugs, piled thick upon the plank floor, were a rainbow of colors, some braided and some woven, some patched, and some were only tied rags.  Long ago, the little girl had decided she wanted a soft floor for her nursery, as opposed to the rushes strewn about her bed chamber, and the staff had indulged her in the demand._

_This was their afternoon tradition, and Margaret had had to put her foot down with the maids to give the two of them this time alone each day.  She might be only eight, but they feared she would complain to her father the king if they didn't allow it.  If one of the ladies maids had been here, they would have rebuked Anne for not holding a handkerchief beneath the spout or offering the princess first choice of the thumbprint biscuits on the sideboard.  But here, in their nursery, Margaret and Anne were not Princess and Companion.  They were sisters, or so her lady liked to pretend.  Sometimes they would look into the polished silver of a mirror and wonder at their faces, so different in coloring.  One dark and one light.  Blue eyes and dark brown._

_Margaret set her cup down on the saucer and reached out a hand to Anne's braids.  She fingered the bow of one thick lock and pulled it from over her shoulder.  When she held it up for Anne to see, she saw blonde twined with black in the thick rope of her hair._

_"Why did you do this?" Margaret asked, twirling the end of the braid around in the air between them, the green ribbon flopping from the motion._

_"To remind myself.  To remember you."  Anne reached over and pulled Margaret's hair tied in pink.  "See?  I gave you mine as well.  This way we'll always be together."_

_"Of course we'll always be together.  We're sisters.  Don't be silly."  The princess dropped Anne's braid then, and grabbed her teacup with both hands, slurping from the cup in a way that would make the maids blush.  She giggled at that, her blue eyes sparkling over the edge of the delicate cup at Anne._

_"You're the one being silly!"  At that, Anne blew some of the sugar dusting from the top of her teacake at Margaret over the little table.  The powder clouded the air between them, setting the princess to laughing and coughing at the same time.  It was nice that her lady liked to pretend they were sisters, but she was, in fact, just a companion for a lonely princess.  She knew the rest of the staff never forgot it, from their comments and stares, or worse, the stern looks Margaret's father gave her._

_"Come on!  Let's go see what Bess is cooking tonight.  There was a big crate at the larder door this morning, and maybe we'll have a feast.  You always like those."  Anne got up to open the door to the spiraling staircase leading around the wall of the tower.  She looked back at Margaret, still sipping from her cup._

_"You'll come back for me, won't you?"  Her eyes lost their mirth and turned melancholy in a moment's breath._

_"I promise.  I promise you."  Anne reached up, grabbing her braid, blonde and black._

 

~oOo~

Anne woke up, still half in her dream of being in the princess's tower nursery.  Her hand was still fisted in her hair, fingers wrapped about the green bow tying the Margaret's hair together with her tight curls.  She didn't know what to make of her dream, and shook her head as if that would disperse the sad thoughts of leaving her friends behind.  She scrambled up and made her way to the other side of the large tree she had slept under.  Pulling down her breeches and pulling up her skirts, she squatted down over a large root, almost sitting on the rough bark, to relieve herself.  Although the field outside the wall of low clouds and thorns looked empty, she still glanced around, eyes wide for fear of being caught out.  It had been much more comfortable inside the tunnel of brambles, the walls of thorns so close about; there was no chance of being spied upon.  Afterwards, she wiped her hands on the thick grass that grew nearby.

She circled back around to the side of the tree that faced the road, adjusting her skirts as she went.  She couldn't really call it a road any longer, as the dirt and ruts were mostly overgrown now.  Anne had never been outside the bailey walls, but she knew what a cart path looked like, and this one no longer looked well used.  When she had embarked on the task of finding rescue for Margaret and the rest of the castle, she thought it would be easy.  She would go outside, find an adult, and let them know of the unnatural sleep everyone suffered.  In her mind, she had guessed, there would have been pavilions filled with brave knights just outside the walls, waiting to charge in on their steeds and waving lances topped with colorful streamers in their house colors, cutting down the thorns.  Or perhaps a kindly wizard with a long white beard and an owl on his shoulder would wave his great staff, pronouncing words of magic and the mist would miraculously lift.  Secretly, she had wanted to find a hedge witch who would enchant the brambles to bloom with roses of every color.  And maybe the flowers would have produced a sweet perfume that would waft in through the castle windows and wake everyone.

But there were no knights, no wizard, and no hedge witch.  No one. 

Her stomach grumbled, bringing her back to the situation at hand.  She rummaged in her pack, pulling out a small piece of jerky-too small by half-and rucked the bag over her shoulders once more.  The ropes burned where she had it tied about under her arms.  She looked at the oiled leather cloak still lying on the ground, and decided to swirl it up over her shoulders and pack together.  From far away, she might look like a hunchback, or maybe a troll of some sort, with the added shape of her bag beneath the cape.  There was nothing for it but to keep walking.  And the best direction she could guess was the road as it led from the wall of thorns and thunderclouds.

 

By midday, she had passed a third abandoned farm.  The first time, she had run up to the door, yelling for help.  When she had approached, she saw the thatch had fallen inward, and the whitewash was long faded on the outside of the home.  She poked around inside, but her search only yielded some broken pottery.  There had been a well in the yard beyond the animal stalls, but someone had capped it with stone long ago.  The second farm was set further back from the road, and she only saw it as she watched a flock of birds wheel over the outbuildings.  There, she found a rusty hatchet leaning against the back wall, and decided it might prove useful.  She stopped there awhile, gorging herself on some blackberries grown wild along an old stone border wall.  Margaret's tutor had spoken of these, though Anne had never seen the walls in person before.  The farmers found rocks all the time when they plowed their fields, and would just pick them up and stack them into little walls subdividing their fields.  Anne wished it didn't look so much like ancient ruins.  She didn't even stop at the third farm, only calling out a cursory hulloo in case someone would hear.

By nightfall, Anne was limping in the hard dirt ruts of the road.  She hadn't seen a single soul all day, passing one empty farmhouse after another.  She didn't understand.  It wasn't supposed to be this way.  There was supposed to be someone to help her, help Margaret, help the king and servants and guardsmen.  When she couldn't walk any longer, she stopped.  Dropping her bag and cloak, Anne rolled her shoulders and rubbed the skin where the rope had chafed.  She spread her cloak down smack in the middle of the road and sat on top of it.  Her legs flopped to either side of her bag while she reached in for the last of her cheese; she was thankful she had thought to drink snow while still inside the brambles, as she still had a full skin of water.

If Anne were honest with herself, she was afraid.  Never had she been away from people before for this long.  Oh, she had been by herself for weeks in the castle as everyone had slept, but at least they were there.  She was alone now.  And she was only ten.  And her friends were in trouble.  And she couldn't find anyone.

After her scant meal of a hard rind of cheese and a few swallows of water, Anne simply gave up and wrapped herself in the felt blanket.  It was warm enough to sleep uncovered, but she didn't feel very secure lying about exposed.  Sleeping out here was definitely different than sleeping under the thorn wall.  There, she was always in the dark and her breath was the only sound she heard when she would lie down.  Here, with a meadow to one side and the foot of a mountain to the other, noise was all about.  The birds rustled in the branches, bumbles buzzed by her ear, and sometimes she would hear a snuffle to one side or another in the low bushes that grew to either side of the road.  It was not restful.  Rolled up in her blanket as she was, only her braids peeked out of her bedroll.

The next morning, she awoke with a whisper of a dream in her mind.  She had dreamed of her lady Margaret, and it wasn't the first time.  Anne knew she felt guilty for leaving the princess behind, but she didn't have a choice in the matter.  Well.  That wasn't exactly true.  She had had a choice.  Her choices were to stay in the creepy, silent castle filled with her friends that might be asleep forever, or go forth and find someone to help.  She had chosen the latter.

Using the morning dew on the grasses near the road, Anne scrubbed the dust from her face.  She longed for a real dip in a hip bath, but she would make do with the first stream she saw.  The morning was even warmer than the day before, and she shoved her leather cloak and breeches into her bag.  A few minutes passed, and Anne finished her meager meal of moldy black bread and a few sips of her precious water. 

This day was the same as the last.  She continued her trudge down the rutted dirt tracks, passing fallow fields, broken outbuildings, and dry wells.  Occasionally, Anne discovered an untended kitchen garden grown wild, providing her with dirty tubers.  Once, she was lucky enough to find some more berries, staining her fingertips (and quite possibly her face) purple.  Her evenings passed away as they had previously, she spread her cloak in the middle of the road and dreamed of Princess Margaret each night.  When she awoke, it was difficult to remember what passed in her dreams.  Anne struggled to continue, putting one foot in front of the other in her search for help. 

One afternoon, she heard the baying of wolves as she was poking through another farmstead.  Large wolves by the sound of it.  Their barks were deep, and as she listened, she could pick out the sound of more than one.  Nervously, she sunk down against the wall, sitting on her heels and clutching the rusty hatchet to her chest.  Anne didn't know what she would do if she were confronted by the wolves, and squeezed her eyes shut, as if closing her eyes would hide her from their sight.  Closer and closer, she heard their howls, could hear their paws thrum against the earth around the home that served as her hiding place.  She felt the door slam open, the wind against her cheek.  She threw up both hands in front of her face, still clutching her precious hatchet, and screamed, "Go away, go away, go away!"

But they didn't go away.  Anne held her breath.  Click.  Click.  She could hear their claws on the floor as the wolves approached her.  Then a hot, wet, stench accosted her nose.  One wolf was close enough to prick her with his whiskers, smelling her.  She felt it cut into her like daggers as claws raked down her shoulder.  She screamed again.

"Come now, girl.  Don't cry." 

She opened one eye at hearing the voice.  When she did, she screamed again.  A monster looked back at her.  It had a wrinkled face and its jaws were slavering with saliva that dripped from its massive jowls.  The creature had teeth as long as her thumb and sharper than any knife.  Opening its mouth wide, Anne had a perfect view down its gullet.  This time when she opened her mouth, no scream came.

"My Hunden aren't that ugly, child."  A shadow fell over her, and Anne looked up and over the gaping mouth of her monster.  Behind it loomed a raggedy man cloaked in stiff boar's hide, his cheeks ruddy with wind and sun.  A scowl split his thick, black beard and he carried a spear still stained with blood.  Two more monsters leaned on him from either side.  They came higher than his waist.  The huntsman looked more fearsome than any nightmare she could remember. 

In moments, she shouldered past the great beasts and flung her arms around his legs, clinging to his knees, her hatchet flung to the floor and forgotten.  Sobs wracked her thin frame, and she wiped her nose on his leather breeches, leaving smears of mucus and salt tears behind.  As she hung there, slumped against his frame, the beasts surrounded them, shouldering into her and slopping her face and neck with their long, pink tongues.  The man awkwardly patted her shoulder and gently pried her away.

"Now, then, what are you doing out here?" 

She picked at the trim of her skirts, and looked up at her unlikely savior.  He definitely didn't look like a shining knight or powerful wizard.  "I need help.  Princess Margaret and the King and all the court are asleep, and I can't wake them up."

"Princess...the King?  What are you going on about girl?  There hasn't been a king in these parts since my grandfather was a boy.  Where is your family?  Where are you from?"  He didn't believe her, it seemed.  He grabbed her around her upper arm and began to drag her from the home.  In a heartbeat, she reached out and snagged her bag to bring with her. 

Now that she was out of the dark of the house, she had a better look at her rescuer and his dogs.  The man looked to be maybe twenty summers old.  His beard glinted with hints of red and copper in the sunshine, and he was dirty.  Perhaps he was even dirtier than she was after sleeping in the road dust for more than a week.  They stood there in the dirt like that, him gripping her arm, dogs circling and snuffing at her boots, her skirts, her bag, her hair.  One of the dogs sat on its haunches in the dust, tongue lolling to the side. 

"I...I've never seen dogs this big before, sir."  And she hadn't.  They only had smaller dogs in the kennels, in brown, black, and white.  Those hounds didn't even come up to her knees, and were constantly rolling and romping in the bailey. 

"And I've never seen skin the color of yours, before.  Where do you come from?"  The man let go her arm and tilted her face up into the light, turning her chin one way and then the other.

"I come from the castle, with Princess Margaret and King Albert, and I woke up, and my lady wouldn't wake up, and when I ran down the stairs, I couldn't get the nurse to wake up, and the guardsmen wouldn't wake up, and I tried Bess in the kitchens and her hearth girls and the maids and the stable boys and then when I left there were these thorns growing all like a big forest and there was lightning and fog and a really bright mist and then I came out but there weren't any knights nor a wise sorcerer with an owl or even a hedge witch with roses!  There was nobody.  And then I walked and walked and walked on the old road, but every farm was empty and the fields were barred by old stone walls like a skeleton's ribs and then this one well had a stone cap and I was sooo thirsty so I only took little sips from my water skin and I found that hatchet, but I didn't know how I was gonna use it."  She ran out of breath, and her tears threatened to start again.

"Girl, girl.  Calm down.  You're safe.  You must have a set of lungs on you, you know that?  What's your name?"

"Anne, sir."

He let go of her chin, stood up a little straighter, and reached down to jostle the shoulder of one of his dogs, then moved to scratch its ear.  They didn't seem nearly as frightful now, though they were still huge.  The light of day did nothing to make them seem not so, so big.  "What is this about the castle behind the brambles?  No one has been heard of from Schloss Dornbusch for nigh on sixty years or more.  Not since the brambles grew over its walls."

"But sir, that's where I come from.  I am the companion to the little princess."

"Enough of that nonsense."  He turned on his heel, giving a sharp whistle that called all three dogs to follow behind.  "You can call me Karl.  Come on.  I'll take you somewhere safe.  Get you some dinner."

Karl had a draft horse waiting near a copse of trees.  The mare was hobbled, clipping sweet summer grass and clover that grew at the edge of the field.  Some saddle bags leaned against a tree trunk, and a dressed boar hung from a low branch.  The man began loading the horse with the bags, and slung the carcass over its withers.  He cleaned his spearhead on a square of linen and fastened it to hang along the horse's side.  "Up you go."  He clasped his fingers together and lowered his hands, making a stirrup to give Anne a leg up.  She launched up to the shoulders of the horse and fisted her fingers in its white mane.  Karl didn't say much.  But that was fine with Anne, because she quickly fell asleep to the sway of the horse. 

She jumped, and realized he had jostled her awake.  Anne didn't know how long she had slept, but discovered that the huntsman had tied a rope about her waist to secure her to the saddlebags.  The road was winding and narrow here.  In the fading light, she could see the hills were steeper, and they closed in like walls on the trail.  Around the next bend, the girl spotted the glow of windows and people walking along the street.  A real street.  A real town.  And people.  A lake spread out to the north of the trail, and houses and shops crowded the base of the hills on the south.  Karl stopped the horse in front of a building with a low hanging sign that depicted a large dog like his own.  The wooden dog hanging from the sign was painted black, with a band picked out in gold about its neck.

"Welcome to the Kammerhund."  He hoisted her off the back of the horse and gave the reins to a boy that emerged from a narrow alley between the buildings.  Karl grabbed the boar from the horse's withers and shouldered it under the low lintel of the inn.  Anne followed, not knowing what else to do with herself.  Soon, all she could think of were the wonderful smells of hot food and the sound of a working kitchen.  As soon as she could glimpse the common room around Karl's back, all other thoughts left her mind.  It wasn't long before Karl had her sitting on a long bench next to him, and she shoveled bits of brown bread soaked in broth into her mouth.  A broad faced woman kept walking up with a wet cloth, wiping Anne's hands and face while the girl continued to eat her fill.  Dirty, weak, and exhausted, Anne fell asleep, her head pillowed on her thin arms as the adults murmured around her.

  

~oOo~

 

 

_"Where did you go?"  Margaret's mouth pouted as she stared at Anne from her bed._

_"I'm right here.  I didn't leave you."  Anne knew she was always with Margaret, her constant companion.  She bent back to her needle work, carefully snipping the thread with her teeth after closing the hole in one of her stockings._

_"No, you weren't."  The little girl sounded petulant.  "I saw.  I know you went away.  I dreamed it.  You're on an adventure without me!"  She got up on her knees in the bed, grabbed a pillow, and tossed it at Anne who sat beside her on a stool._

_She swung her head to the side in time, the beads on the end of her braids clacking together noisily as she moved.  "Margaret!  What would your father say if he saw you behave this way?"_

_"My father is sleeping and he doesn't care!  Nobody cares.  You're the only one who sees me now, and you keep leaving me."  The girl was becoming hysterical, Anne could tell, by the quaver in her voice.  "Where are you going?  Why don't you tell me?  You never remember when you come back."_

_"Oh, Princess.  Don't cry.  I won't leave you, I promise."  But was that true?  Anne thought about it a moment, and remembered walking through a dark tunnel filled with sharp brambles, the thorns pulling at her cloak and yanking her hair from her braids.  She saw an empty road and a giant with three beasts.  She sat on the bed next to Margaret and hugged the younger girl.  "I promise.  We're best friends right?  Best friends keep their promises."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been edited from the original posted version, as I only recently acquired the amazing assistance of a beta reader.
> 
> Thank you for making it through my "Let's describe everything!" chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The townsfolk try to help Anne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't do this without my wonderful beta [ Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie).

The water was quickly becoming tepid, but Anne didn’t care.  She soaked in the water as long as allowed, scrubbing every speck of road dust from her skin.  The soap was a thin sliver that evoked memories of summer winds blowing in through the casements and the rushes still sweet and fresh on the floors of the castle.  Well.  If she were honest, the soap was rough lye and smelled like the dregs of a mop bucket, but she could imagine.  She closed her eyes and sunk down in the tub, leaving her nose just above the level of water.

The innkeeper Lena burst into the room without knocking.  “Girl, are you going to take all day?  Here you go.  It might be a little short for you, but my girl's things should do.  I  couldn’t find any shoes for you so those boots you wore here will have to do for now."  She thrust a rough towel her way and shook out a wool kirtle, setting it on the stool near the copper tub. The skirt was a dark red and had a yellow pattern dyed into the fabric.  It looked festive and like nothing she had seen before.  As a lady’s companion, most of her clothing had been in subdued colors of dark blues, greens, and browns.  She was never to outshine the princess.  She went about stacking underclothes and stockings on top of the dress.

“Thank you.”  Anne meant it wholeheartedly.  She stood up from the bath and started patting her hair dry.  She had pulled out Margaret’s hair from one of her braids when she first climbed into the hip bath.  Now clean of travel dirt, she deftly wove the blonde lock back in, tying it off with the same green ribbon.  She felt like a tourney knight from the stories riding into the melee with a lady’s token of favor.  Then when she tried on the clothing, she felt ridiculous.  The hem of the skirt fell well above her ankles and the chemise barely covered her hips, not to mention that the cut was _very_ different from what she was used to.  Instead of a tabard to wear over her kirtle, Lena had given her an apron.  An _apron._  

The older woman shrugged.  “You’re much taller than my daughter was at your age,” she said in explanation.  “I expect you in the kitchens now that you’re finished.”

Anne followed the older woman down the back stairs that was for the service folk.  The steps weren’t of a uniform height, and several times she needed to put out a hand to steady herself.  Beneath her fingers, she could feel the wood paneled walls were coated in years of fingerprints and candle soot.  She began wiping the grime from her fingers as they reached the landing outside the kitchen, and she felt grateful for the apron Lena had given her with the dress.

At a trestle table in front of the great hearth, Karl waited with his dogs, his _hunden_ as he liked to call them.  Two of the dogs sprawled out near the charcoals, and another bent its blocky head beneath his hand, enjoying a good scratch behind its ear.  “Well, Girl, you cleaned up nice.  Though it looks like there was more road than child under all that dirt.”  Lena boxed his ears good-naturedly as she passed behind him.  “Now, let’s hear your story again.  Where are you from?  Where is your family?”

She took a couple of deep breaths.  Just beneath the surface, she could feel the panic from yesterday boiling.  “I never knew my family.  I was given as a lady’s companion to Princess Margaret when I was still at the teat.  I grew up as companion and lady’s maid in the castle of King Albert.  When I awoke one night, I discovered that the whole castle was asleep, from the princess and her royal father to the boys in the stable and the cooks in the larder.”

“We all know the story of Schloss Dornbusch.  Our grandparents told us the stories when we were babes in arms.”  Karl tried to dismiss her story, but Lena leaned her forearms on the table and waved Anne on in her story.

“I waited, but no help came.  And I couldn’t wake anyone from their slumber.   I don’t know how long I waited for help, because I couldn’t count the days.  It was always night and always winter.”  She paused, distracted by the bustle of a cook in the back of the kitchen.  “I left.  I left to find someone to help, but outside the bailey walls, there were only thorns that reached up over my head, blocking out the sky.  When I finally made it through, there was no one _outside_ either.  All the farms were abandoned, and I didn’t spy a single soul until Master Karl and his dogs found me.  Can you help me rescue them?”

Lena and Karl exchanged a look, and Anne wished she knew them well enough to know what words went unspoken between them.  The innkeeper’s voice, when it came, was soft.  “Girl, no one has come from the castle for over sixty years.  And no one has been able to find a way inside the thorn wall in all that time either.” 

“Sixty years?”  The words came out as a squeak.

The older woman must have seen Anne’s face fall, because she reached out and grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze.  “But I’ll send Karl back to the wall when he next ranges for the hunt, and we’ll see what comes of it.  If there’s a way in or out now, we’ll find it for you and save your friends.”

“I don’t see where we’ll have more luck than everyone else.  In this part of the country, there’s another king, another castle, right around each river bend, on top of each mountain, and nestled in every valley.  For three generations, kings have been sending every knight and squire to try to break through that wall, and all of them have failed.  You’re the first face we’ve seen come through from old Albert’s court.”  Karl stood up, and grabbed a tin plate from the sideboard.   He grabbed up a side of bacon and some greasy fry cakes left over from the inn’s breakfast, shoving one of them in his mouth.  “Eventually, the farmers moved on, closer to another village or castle,” he mumbled around his food.  “A lot of them moved here, and joined our folk in the mines.”

She knew Karl was just being honest, but the truth sounded harsh.  Anne hastily wiped a tear from her cheek, willing no more to fall.  “What am I supposed to do?  Where can I go?”  She hated how pathetic she sounded.  Beneath the table, she wiped her tear on her lap, twisting her fingers in the apron.

“Well.  You leave that to me and my husband.  You can stay here with us until Karl goes out on the West Road again.  You can help me here, at the Kammerhund, to keep yourself busy in the meantime.”  Lena gave her hand one more squeeze before getting up from the table.  In a few moments, Anne found a plate piled in front of her that rivaled the meal she ate just last night.  “I need more help than ever, now that my girl left to set up house on her own.”

Over the next few days, Anne learned the goings on of Briar Haven.  Days were quiet, filled with the busy work of cleaning the inn’s many rooms and cooking the day’s meals.  Nights were filled with raucous music and dirty men, as the miners filed down the mountain and spent their wages in the tavern of the Kammerhund.  Oftentimes, they were still covered in grains of salt as they stomped their way to the long tables, claiming a space at a bench, and calling for trenchers and pints.  Anne hovered along the wall of the room, marveling at how they glittered beneath the salt.  Lena felt she was still too young and not strong enough to carry the large trays piled with slabs of pork and warm, yeasty beer.

Two days after her arrival, Lena took her along on her visit to the shops in the market, teaching her where all the stalls were, and what each merchant offered.  All the women were pleased to see her, and oohed over her dark curls and dusky cheeks.  Her coloring was rare among the townsfolk, and Lena explained that the only dark skinned people she had ever seen came with the caravans each year.  It was during this trip to the shops that the woman learned Anne could read.

It was all very different from her time in the castle, and she constantly pestered the Lena with questions about _everything_ , when she wasn’t bouncing at her heels asking when they would leave on the West Road.  All the shopkeepers were women, and their daughters worked the counters if they were tall enough.  Anne never been to a shop before, when she lived with Margaret.

“Mistress Lena, where are all the menfolk?”  She had to ask after their fifth stop that morning.

“Our men are in the mountain across the lake.  Our sons are, too.”  Lena gestured roughly over her shoulder as they passed a seamstress’ window, bolts of wool and felt showing bright colors behind the panes.  “The mountain claimed my first husband, Josef.  He was Trina’s father.”

“I’m sorry, mistress.”  And she was.  She’d lost people before, good serving folk at the castle. 

“It happens.  For generations, we’ve been losing miners to the mountain.  So we only send our men into the salt mines now.  That leaves us women to run things here in town.  The Kammerhund is mine, not Karl’s.  And Elsa is the seamstress and Louisa is in charge of the stables.  Annette runs the smithy, but she’s taken on a boy for apprentice, for she hasn’t any daughters of her own.”  As they spoke of the smithy, they stopped in, ducking beneath staves and knives, pans and hammers.  Lena was there to pick up a mended pot, and money changed hands.  “That’s why you see so many miners in the Kammerhund every evening.  Those are the menfolk who haven’t caught the eye of a wife yet.  So they all eat their meals and rest their heads at my inn.”

Anne was tall for her age, and peered over the counter.  Instead of gold coins, Lena doled out small heart-shaped white rocks.  “Why are you paying her with a rock?”

Both women laughed, and Lena paused to explain, “This is a salt cake!  We chip it off of the blocks that are mined, and use it for our coinage.  Salt is more precious than any metal or gem.  When the caravans come, we can get more with these little chips of salt than we could with gold dust or coins.”

“Oh.”  It took her a moment to process that.  She’d never heard of any other money beside coin.  “Why are they shaped like hearts?”

This time it was the blacksmith that explained.  “Our people used antlers in the old days as a salt pick, and the antlers naturally made a heart shape.  When we starting using metal picks, we kept the same shape.  I think it’s pretty romantic, if you ask me,” said Annette.  She turned and summoned someone from the back of the shop.

“How is your new boy working out?” Lena seemed to know everyone and their business.

“Och, he’s alright.  Kristof lost his da ~~~~last year in a cave-in, and his mother didn’t want to lose her boy, too.  He’s had some trouble adjusting.  His sisters went to the Dyers, you know.  Kristof’s strong, but his head is always in the clouds.”   Anne noticed that the smith wore an apron like the other women in town, but hers was leather and reached past her knees.  Annette was taller than Karl the huntsman, and her yellow hair was plaited on either side of her head, tucked up into several loops of braids just under her ears.  Her kirtle left her arms bare, and Anne could see how solid and strong she was.  She’d never seen shoulders like that on a woman before, and it reminded her of a man.  “Right now, he works the bellows for me until I decide to give him some practice workpieces.”  Anne saw a shape move behind the curtain leading to the forge, backlit by firelight.

Lena finished her small talk and motioned for Anne to add the mended pot to her basket of goods.  As they turned to leave, she spotted a list pinned to the counter detailing various metals and amounts.  “Where do you find fifty thousand mithqals of gold?  I thought gold was rare in these parts?”  She pointed a finger at the list as she asked the smith.

Lena and Annette exchanged surprised glances, and the smith was the one to answer her, turning intense blue eyes onto the young girl.  Annette lowered her voice.  “It is rare, but we have a trade contract with a merchant from a southern town.  We have a salt mine and they have a gold mine-and we each need what the other has.   So once a year, we make an equal trade in weight of gold for salt, and we both feel we come out the better in the bargain.”

“Girl-Anne, did you read that?” asked Lena, as she rushed her out the door.

“Yes.  Her list said fifty thousand mithqals of gold and 30 of copper.  That is more than we ever had at the castle in all my years there.  And our forge never was able to order it for their workpieces, it only arrived as bars or coins.  And that would have taken years worth of pelts to trade for it.  Mostly, our smithy worked with iron and tin.” 

Lena stopped dead in the street, turned towards Anne, and grabbed her by the shoulders.  “You can read.”  She bent down, peering in her eyes.  “You know the measurements of a mithqal.”

“Well, yes.  Why wouldn’t I?”

“You can do sums?”

“Yes.”

“Come.  You’re coming with me.”  Lena grabbed her by her upper arm and walked so quickly back to the Kammerhund, Anne almost had to run back to the inn.

“She’s telling the truth.”  Lena burst in to the common room, startling Karl from a game of dice with two of the stable girls.

“What?”

“She’s telling the truth!  Anne can read and do sums.  And she’s familiar with foreign currency.” 

Anne stood beneath the lintel, still holding her basket of goods and the small pot.  She didn’t understand why they were so excited.

Karl shooed the stable girls from the room and retrieved a book from behind the counter.  He flipped the cover over and showed it to Anne.  Detailed within were columns of amounts and goods, income and assets. 

“Why are you showing me your bookkeeping ledger?”

“Anne.”  Lena sounded very serious.  Her and her husband lined up in front of her again.  “This is very important.  What do you see when you look in our book?”

“I see Manucci’s method of double entry accounting?” 

The couple turned to stare at each other, mouths agape.  “It’s the Medici version.  But it’s close,” Lena whispered to her husband.

“What?  Why are you asking me this?”  She turned to look at the huntsman and the innkeeper in turn.

“No one else in Briar Haven knows how to do accounting this way.  Only a few shopkeepers here can do sums, and I’m the only one who uses double entry.  And you can _read._  And you’re only a little girl.  You must have had a tutor…”  Lena’s words trailed off.

“Yes.  I mean, the princess had a tutor and I sat in with her lessons.  And I would help her study.  She is better with languages than I am, but of the two of us, I have the head for sums.  Why are you and Master Karl so excited?”

“Because,” said Karl, “we didn’t really believe you were from Schloss Dornbusch before.  But there is nowhere else you could have learned this, unless from another kingdom, and that is unlikely.”  He turned and placed the ledger back behind the counter.  “We take the West Road tomorrow.”

 

Lena came into Anne’s cubby when it was still dark.  She struggled to wake from her dreams, and still felt Margaret’s presence in the tower room as she shook the cobwebs from her mind.  She had dreamed of the princess every night since she first walked through the bailey wall, and last night was no different.  The girls had discussed the village, and the strangeness of the buildings and clothing.  Anne hadn’t told Lena and her husband yet about her dreams.  She suspected that they were true dreams, but she couldn’t know for sure.  She still had trouble remembering them the morning after.

“Girl.  It’s time.  If you want to make it far on the road before dark, you need to leave with Karl and his hunden now.”  She tossed Anne’s original green wool dress and leather breeches and cape at her.  “Here.  I cleaned them.  I have food packages for you both as well, so you need not tarry long before leaving.”

Anne groped her way into her clothes in the dark and splashed water from the basin over her face, scrubbing away the last vestiges of sleep.  Before long, she found herself on the back of the same draft horse as Karl rode just in front of her.  The great dogs, five now, ranged out in front and to either side.  A couple of the villagers had joined them.  Some were miners she was used to seeing in the common room of the Kammerhund, and she was surprised to see the seamstress Elsa, Annette the blacksmith, and her apprentice had come with them, too.  They were all on foot.

“The villagers, they are interested in the castle, too.  They’d like another place to trade, and not all men want to work in the mines.”  Karl explained this over his shoulder as they tramped down the old road headed out of town.  “And not all women want to send their sons into the mountain.”

It didn’t take nearly as long to reach the wall as when Anne first headed out.  They didn’t stop at the homesteads along the way as she had, but camped along the roadway, making good time every day.  Anne felt left out of their group, and mainly stayed quiet as all made camp of an evening.  Mostly, she watched with wide eyes and tried to remember everything that was mentioned along the way.  Most empty buildings belonged to the families that had moved to Briar Haven.  She learned that that abandoned farmstead used to belong to Louisa’s family, before they took up tailoring.  The old house with the blackberry bushes on the wall had a family that died of the shakes after the thorn wall went up.  The place where Karl found her had been empty for two generations, she learned, and was where Karl first learned to hunt boar with his mother and father and their dogs.  She looked on the West Road with new eyes, now that she overheard the stories behind every outbuilding, stump, and well.

When they came upon the thorn wall, it was still partially obscured by the shimmering cloud roiling with flashing light.  The whole group shuffled and whispered in the road, unclear how to proceed.  Karl was bent down near where old ruts extended into the barrier, his hand upon an obvious shoot print from when Anne had stumbled forth.

“Girl, come here.”  Karl and Lena, and most of the townsfolk if she were honest, had taken to calling her ‘Girl’ instead of by her name.  Anne stood at his shoulder, trembling at being so close to the briar wall she had escaped less than a week prior.  “Can you pass through?”

She pushed a hand forward, squeezing her eyes shut.  She pushed harder.  The mist that swirled through the brambles wouldn’t let her hand pass inside.  “I can’t do it.  Why can’t I do it?”

“Try here, where you first walked out.”

Anne tried again, and even went so far as to line her boots up with the faded prints she had left behind.  She even tried walking _backwards_ to reenter the barrier.  She had no luck. 

The other folk from town, the miners, the blacksmith and her apprentice, the seamstress.  They all turned and looked elsewhere while she scrubbed her wrist over her eyes, smearing the road dust with her tears.  Karl bent down, gathering her to him while she sobbed into the leather of his vest.  Anne felt now the finality of losing Margaret, her only true friend she had ever had.  Margaret, the closest she had ever felt to knowing what it was to have family.

“Girl, Anne, look at me.  Look at me.”  He squatted down and turned her so he could peer into her blotchy, stained face.  “You’re brave.  You escaped when no one else had in three generations.  You _beat_ the magic of the cursed castle and unnatural briars.  You’re magical and brave.  So we can’t go back through the wall today.  Maybe we can next week, or next year, or in ten years.  But you won’t give up.  And Lena and I won’t give up.”  He looked up at the folk that had come with them.  The folk of Briar Haven had been hopeful, but now their faces showed just how much they sorrowed with the girl.  “You have a home with us at the inn as long as you like.  Come home with us.  We’ll try again, I promise.”

The ride back to town was much more subdued.  There was less joking and storytelling around the campfire each evening, and the women who came up to Anne were always placing heavy hands on her shoulder, mirroring their heavy hearts.  _It_ _’s alright,_ their ~~~~~~~~eyes always seemed to say to Anne.

Their last night on the road, Anne pulled her pipe from her bag, and blew a few notes experimentally as she sat on a fallen log near the coals.  Their party looked up, and seemed drawn to her forlorn music, but Anne just ignored them as she tried note after note, trying to remember all the songs she and Margaret used to sing to one another during their play.  She always fingered her pipe, as she carried it around in the pockets of her skirts during the day, but hadn’t thought to play since her escape.  Now, although she couldn’t quite find the melody, she seemed lost to the past, and played until the last embers of their fire faded out.  When she was done, Anne looked up, surprised to see Karl and Annette with tears streaming down their face; even the miners had an unnatural shine to their eyes, and looked out into the darkness that surrounded their camp.

She didn’t need to say anything to Lena when they got back to town.  The woman just enveloped her in her broad embrace, and she felt the wool skirts surround her as they hugged.  The whole town piled into the common room that evening at the Kammerhund, and some folk picked up instruments and began to play cheerful tunes.  The trestle tables were pushed to the side and the benches were circled round, to clear an opening in the middle of the room.  One fiddle player clambered atop a table and played and stopped and crooned while a miner sat beneath him on a bench, thumping out a rhythm on the wood of the seat.  Most were tunes she recognized, but the words were changed.  Some were new songs entirely.  Sometimes, men and women would whirl around, stomping their feet to the hectic music, and sometimes, the folk would sway and raise their pints in memory to a particularly doleful tune.  The fiddle player began a new tune, and much of the room raised their voices to sing along.

 

 

> _Let me tell to you this story_
> 
> _Of maidens fair and heroes’ glory_
> 
> _Of evil spells and cursed towers_
> 
> _And quests to end all dark powers_
> 
> _That veil the kingdom and its castle._
> 
> _A wicked hag had cast a spell_
> 
> _Sending good folk straight to Hell_
> 
> _The Night Mare trampled through their dreams_
> 
> _Causing grief and sorrow, it seems_
> 
> _To those that sleep within the castle._
> 
> _The king of thorns and queen of briars,_
> 
> _The knights of brambles and their squires,_
> 
> _Lay in slumber, time without end,_
> 
> _Waiting for a Prince to mend_
> 
> _The curse that lay upon their castle._
> 
> _In the highest tower room_
> 
> _The Princess trapped in silent doom_
> 
> _Awaits the hero that will wake_
> 
> _Her from the slumber that will make_
> 
> _The evil curse to leave her castle._
> 
> _Upon their lips with true love’s kiss_
> 
> _Their hearts will heal what was amiss_
> 
> _Their kingdoms joined in lover’_ _s bliss_
> 
> _Will cause the wicked witch to hiss_
> 
> _As the spell lifts from the castle._

When the last notes faded, Anne was still sitting rapt with attention.  This was the ~~~~first song she’d heard telling of the curse on Margaret and their people.  Although it was late, she felt filled with excitement.  She knew what to do now.  She needed to find a prince, _the right prince_ , to lift the curse on Margaret.  It was either that or find the wicked witch that had cast the spell in the first place.   She couldn’t wait to go to sleep, so she could tell her friend she finally knew how to fix everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne grows up and seizes an opportunity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so very grateful to my beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie).

_The sunlight fell in the spring garden, glinting off the water and blinding the eyes of the two girls as they dangled their bare legs in the pool. The water lazily circled the mound of the keep before being diverted to the ditch that surrounded the bailey. Rough cut stone formed a low wall around the natural spring and acted as a perfect bench for Anne and Margaret, now grown tall enough to splash their feet on the surface. This was one of their favorite places to play, even before the sleeping curse had found them abed. At least in their dreams, the sun was always shining and the breeze felt warm as it ruffled through their hair._

_A shock of cold water brought Anne from her reverie, and she gasped in surprise as the princess dissolved into giggles._

_“Stop daydreaming in your dream, Anne! We don’t have time for that.” Her grin contradicted her words, and the princess reached over to tug on one of Anne’s braids._

_“What were we discussing? The last traders, right.” She tapped one finger against her lips as she mentally retrieved the last night’s goings on. “Well, Wilhelm the Tinker said that Redwall just burned two witches last fall, but none were known to have powers over people. The hedge witches were accused of causing sickness in some lambs. And Magda and Matthew, the cloth merchants, said there is a prince at Schloss der Schwäne, but he is an old man long married, waiting for his even older Father-King to die. All promised to bring word of other witches or princes the next they visit Briar Haven.”_

_“So where does that count leave us?” asked Margaret, sighing. “Seven princes and eleven witches, all useless to our needs. Thank you, Anne, for continuing to look. I don’t tell you enough how your friendship is the only thing that keeps me sane in this cursed trap.” She smiled at her then, clasping her hands in hers and giving them a squeeze._

_“Come. Tell me what news you hear from the countryside. Have the tax collectors come again from the provinces? Or the ambassadors for the Sea King?“ Margaret was always asking Anne about neighboring kingdoms and the politics of the day. She may have been trapped in a dark dream for the better part of a decade, but you wouldn’t know it to speak with her. Court intrigue was like mother’s milk to her, but she always had an ear for town gossip as well. The princess always insisted the affairs of towns were just as important as the affairs of kings. Briar Haven, as it stood, was still an independent city, but that didn’t stop any of the neighboring nations from trying to pull them in under their circle of influence. It seemed everyone wanted a cut of the profits from the salt mine. Her mouth dried out as she told the younger girl all the recent news from about town._

_Eventually, grown tired of repeating merchant gossip, Anne reached into her pocket, pulling out her pipe. “Here. I learned some new songs last night at the Kammerhund. Do you want to hear?”_

_“Always.”_

_Anne proceeded to play a bright tune that made Margaret jump up from the low stone wall and dance around in a circle in the bailey. She twitched her skirts about her bare ankles as her feet found the rhythm. Anne finished the tune, lowered her pipe, and then sang the words to the best of her memory._

~oOo~

As the last wagon disappeared around the bend, Anne continued to wave her goodbyes to the traders and their families. _Good_ _riddance_. The tinker’s draft horse ate more in three days than the pair of oxen brought by the cloth merchants had in a week. They were headed east, she thought. _They always left by the east path._ In all her time waiting, no one ever came from the west that wasn’t from town.

The years had passed quickly for Anne as she grew up at the inn with Mistress Lena and Master Karl. She continued to trek to the wall of fog and thorns a couple of times a year when the weather was mild, and the townsfolk of Briar Haven always kept good company on the road. She never quit asking about sorcerers, princes, and witches, but she was also able to make a life for herself earning her position in town. As one of the few villagers gifted with numbers and knowledge of foreign currency, many of the merchants hired her to keep track of their trades. Some even asked her to teach their daughters.

Now that she was older, her days passed much in a settled routine. She was up before dawn to help Lena with morning tasks, cleaning the rooms once the men left for the mines; afternoons were her own, and her nights were spent crouched on the end of a crowded bench as she listed to the others tell stories or sing songs. Occasionally, she brought out her pipe to play folk tunes she learned from the traveling merchants, along with all the bits of gossip from neighboring kingdoms.

The summer Anne turned eighteen, a large caravan came to Briar Haven. This was more than just a traveling merchant. This was a complement of wagons and carts, mules and teams of oxen, men and women, yapping dogs and laughing children. They made much noise as they emerged from the east pass, talking and shouting and singing and rumbling. Some of the folk played pipes or fingered lyres. A couple even tapped the rims of drums strung from around their necks.

And there was so much color. The people were more colorful than she’d ever seen before. Their carts were painted with bright hues and strange designs, the people were swathed in beaded robes, embroidered vests, and twisted wraps on their heads hung with golden tassels. Some had the pale skin and ruddy cheeks Anne was accustomed to, but others glowed golden like caramel or shone dark with skin as dusky as her own or even darker.

The folk of Briar Haven hung out their windows or stepped out on the wooden walkway as they watched the strangers come into town. Some of the younger children began running alongside the caravan, and as is the nature of children, all began to play with one another despite not sharing a language.

Mistress Lena, along with Annette, Louisa, and some of the other women in town, went out to meet with the visitors. A few of the traders spoke in the common tongue, and all came to an agreement that the majority would set up a camp on the other end of the village and some would stay at the inn. More quickly than Anne thought possible, the caravan staked out an encampment, raising colorful pavilions of silk and damask.

Anne learned from the blacksmith in the following days that these were the people with whom they normally exchanged salt for gold and other metals. Typically, their merchants made the trade midway between their cities, but had decided to seek out the source of their salt trade. They had brought more than ingots of copper and gold, iron and bronze. They also brought with them minstrels and acrobats and players and animal trainers. In the evenings, the miners filed down to the trade encampment instead of the Kammerhund and avidly watched the performers with their strange but beautiful music, lithe dancers, and peddlers of magic. Many salt-hearts changed hands in the following days, but the folk also traded bits of home-craft with the newcomers: ribbons for clay pots, enameled plaques for swathes of fabric, woven baskets for children’s toys.

Like most of Briar Haven, Anne enjoyed the diversion of the caravan, and especially loved to listen to the traveling bards with their songs and rhythms and stories that were so new to her. Whenever Mistress Lena would allow, she would venture to the end of town and sit on a square of cloth, watching the dark skinned musicians with exhilaration. However, she always felt their eyes upon her as she walked between their tents and cook fires. Some folk pointed at her, and once, a woman had grabbed her forearm, pointing at her skin and then gesturing to herself. Anne, embarrassed, just smiled and shook her head, not understanding the woman’s words but knowing the meaning nonetheless. She knew they were interested in her, for the color of her skin was unlike the rest in town.

One day, Anne loitered in the courtyard of the inn. She was fumbling with the fingering on her pipe and trying to recall the tune she had overheard the night before. A tall, dark man wearing a long robe of the finest silks sidled up to her as she leaned against the stone of the well. He stood by and listened awhile, and he seemed to be lost in the song she played. She was noticed the way his eyes seemed to glaze over and she soon lowered the pipe from her lips to inquire as to what he wanted.

“Many pardons, but I was entranced by your playing. Where have you learned that song?” he began in the common tongue.

“I listened to your own people last evening, and this is one of their songs,” explained Anne.

“You must have much talent to learn so quickly. Tell me, how come you to this town?” he asked. “I’m sorry, but it is quite obvious you are not of this place.”

“My name is Anne, and I have always known these people. Excuse me, good sir, but who are you?” She was glad he could speak her language, and was impressed by his speech.

“Forgive me, I am Kamunu. I am but a clerk to a great merchant. I gather stories for our bards, and sometimes I write them down on scrolls of vellum. I was curious what your story was and I will give you a story in return, if you should like to trade.” The older man placed one be-ringed hand upon his breast, slightly bowing.

As she was always looking for a way to help her friend, Anne told him her story of the castle in the brambles. She explained about her search for a noble and heroic prince to break the curse or perhaps a wizard with powers to magick the sleeping spell away.

“Forgive me, my lady, I have heard tell of such a place as this one, but I never knew someone had escaped the Castle of Slumber.”

“Castle of Slumber?”

“Yes, for that is what your castle is called in the minstrels’ tales far from here. I do not know of any charming princes to bestow love’s kiss upon your maid, but perhaps I know of someone who can help you after all.” The man leaned forward then, lowering his voice to a hush. “Our people travel far in this world, meeting many different and strange peoples. We hear of wicked magics and powerful spells. I know of a sorceress, one who wields great power over the wind in the sky, the growing things from the earth, and the fires in men’s hearts. She reigns supreme in another land on the other side of these mountains that shadow your village of salt. Her I would seek out, if I were you.”

Anne felt her chest tighten; in fear or hope she did not know. “Can she not come here?” Her voice came out as a whisper.

“No. For one does not command one such as she. You must seek her out.” He placed a hand upon her shoulder as he spoke, his eyes burning like dark coals as they peered into her face.

“Anne! Is everything all right?” Lena’s voice calling out to her from the back door of the inn shook her from her reverie. “Who is with you?”

“I’m fine, Lena,” she called over her shoulder. “Master Kamunu here was just telling me tales of another land on the other side of the mountains.”

She turned back to Kamunu. “I…I would like to meet with her. How can I-I mean-can you take me to her?” She slipped her pipe into the pocket of her skirt then wiped a hand on her apron.

Kamunu leaned back against the well with her then and his face split into a bright smile. “Yes. We will be traveling to her palace when we leave here. The voyage will take long, and we will pass through many other lands on our way, but that is one of our destinations.”

“How much? I mean, how can I pay you to travel with your company?” Anne did receive wages in salt-hearts, but she had no concept of the price to travel with a merchant’s caravan. _I promise._ Her vow to Margaret weighed heavily on her heart, and she decided she must go with this caravan to the land beyond the mountains. After all, it was the first news she had had of a living sorcerer that might be able to help.

“You need not worry. I am sure our minstrels would welcome you within their ranks, if I am any judge of the tune from your pipe. I will speak with my mistress-merchant and arrange for a place for you in our procession. We will leave in three days time. Make ready, Anne. We will talk again before we leave.” At that, Kamunu turned and walked from the courtyard. The sunlight glinted from the heavy chains of gold that hung about his neck and sparked from the many gems that adorned his knuckles.

It was only after he lowered the latch on the courtyard gate that Anne realized she had been holding her breath.

The night before she was to leave with the caravan, it seemed as though the whole town crowded into the Kammerhund. Tears pricked her eyes when she came into the common room to witness all her dear friends gathered together to celebrate her journey. Lena hugged her tight, squeezing the very air from her chest, and Karl dropped a large, warm hand upon her shoulder. The dogs, the ever present boar hounds that always seemed to swirl about in Karl’s vicinity, bounded about the room as well as they sensed the energy of excitement and anxiety. But Anne knew they were more interested in unattended trenchers, crispy skins, and fat drippings.

Town musicians and traveling bards shared the floor tonight, alternately climbing atop one of the long trestle tables to pick out a tune on their fiddle or to whistle out a tune on a pipe. By the early hours, all their voices were hoarse from singing and shouting, and even Lena and her kitchen girls joined in the fun.

That evening, everyone in town claimed a dance from Anne, twirling her around the plank floor and stomping in time to the jaunty tunes, while others raised their steins in toast to her. Lena, Louisa the tailor, Annette, Karl, and even Kristoff the blacksmith’s apprentice all danced in turns with her, and sometimes they spun in circles with hands linked together in circles or snaked around the room in dancing lines.

Eventually, the townsfolk began to file out into the night, searching out their own beds for what sleep they could find before the morning. One of the minstrels from the caravan sat upon the end of a bench, playing a doleful tune on a harp. Kamunu, seated further down on the bench, translated the song for those who were left in the common room.

 

 

> _When the dragon wakes, the earth will shudder, sending men across the lands. As a mother loves her sons, daughters fill her heart. The air moans, the sky cries, the land is dust to all. And in the end, our world is thrice damned, people wander and forget. As we breathe our last breath, the dragon flies again, and the stars shine on us all._

The song was beautiful, and the minor key gave Anne chills. The singer’s song rhymed and the translation did not, but the clerk’s speech was just as lovely, although it seemed sad for some reason. Something must have been lost in the translation.

The next morning, Lena followed her about her room as Anne added a few last items to her satchel. It brought to mind packing in the castle so long ago. _Had it been eight years already?_ She peered into the looking glass over the basin, trying her best to see how her braid looked. She tugged at the black and yellow plait and retied the green ribbon.

“Girl. Anne,” said Lena. “I know you need to do this, but I wanted to impress upon you that the Kammerhund will always be your home. Karl and I love you as a daughter-just as we love Trina.” The innkeeper folded Anne into her chest one more time, just holding her close. She was so tall now that she was able to rest her chin on the older woman’s head. “When you find your sorceress, when you rescue your princess, you come back here. You promise to come back, even if it is just to give an old woman a hug one more time.”

Anne looked down into the woman’s face, touched by the tears in her eyes. “I promise, Mistress Lena. But it will be a long time before you’re an old woman.” _I promise_. Anne had a lot of promises that weighed on her heart.

When she walked to the end of town, she saw the merchant caravan was already packed to go. Gathered before them, some more of the townsfolk milled around.

“I didn’t think anyone would be here. We all said our farewells last night.” Seeing her friends again by light of day moved her more than their party the previous night. She approached, and dropped her bag next to her boots. One by one, the women of town wrapped her in an embrace. Some had trinkets to pass to her, candies, ribbons, a small pewter pendant.

Kristoff stepped forward from Annette’s side, and glanced at her shyly. The apprentice had grown much over the years, and was almost as muscular as his mistress now. His hair hung down over his blue eyes, and his freckles burned brighter under his blush. “I’d like you to have this, Miss Anne.”

She saw he proffered a pipe, a musician’s pipe like her own, but cast in metal. She took it from his hand, eyes wide with excitement, and blew a few experimental notes. The tone rang true. “This is wonderful, Kristoff! Did you get this from the traders? This is too much. I couldn’t possibly-“

“He made it for you, Girl,” said Annette. “He’s been working on a pipe for over a year now. I cannot tell you how many he cast and then melted down again. When we heard word you were leaving us, he put his finishing touches on this one. Even had one of the minstrels test it to be sure it would serve.”

She swung her eyes from the blacksmith to the apprentice, who shrugged under her inspection. “I used to listen to you play in the common room. You would play whenever the bards would come to town, and I heard them call your small, wooden pipe a child’s toy. I always thought your music was like magic; I just wanted you to have a proper instrument.” He seemed flustered, and blushed all the harder.

Kristoff was a young man now, and should have been making eyes at the other women in town. She’d never even noticed his interest before. Anne was flattered, but wondered that it didn’t set her heart to beating faster. She smiled at him then and said, “This is beautiful, Kristoff. I will cherish this always, and thank you. With this, I will feel like I always have the people of Briar Haven with me. I should never be homesick.” She meant every word.

Anne shouldered her pack once more and turned to follow Kamunu and the colorful caravan out through the east pass. She’d never come this way before. With every step she took, she could feel Margaret and Lena, Karl and his dogs, Annette and Kristoff, the wall of thorns and mountain of salt fall away behind her. The words seemed to sound in her head as she placed one foot in front of the other. _I promise_. Without thinking, one hand snaked up and fisted around her braid, holding tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you think.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne travels with the caravan and is given a history lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie), without whom this would be completely unreadable.

Balancing one hand on the high wheel of a garishly painted wagon, Anne pulled off her left boot. She dropped it in the dust and massaged the ball and arch of her foot. If she had thought the trek through the brambles was more difficult, her body was telling her differently now. She glanced up as some of her fellows passed, nodding at each in turn. Like her, their faces were grey with dust and striped by the rivulets of sweat that tracked down their faces each day.

This was an old routine now. All had seemed fun and adventurous when she had set out with Kamunu and the rest of the traveling people. After the first day, though, she had attempted to ride on one of the wagons to relieve the ache in her legs. Quickly, she discovered that perching on the boards over the axles was the most uncomfortable experience of her life. The bones in her backside screamed in the memory of the jarring impact of the road, and she shook her head with the memory.

Once she had rubbed away the pain, Anne slid her boot back on and tramped towards the camp, quickly setting to work. Everyone in the convoy helped to picket the burden animals, prepare the meals, and perform other chores. The merchants even toiled alongside the drovers and guards and washerwomen. Honestly, it wasn’t that different from her tasks at the Kammerhund, and Anne quickly found her place among them, despite the difference in language.

Anne had discovered she enjoyed the people from the foreign kingdom. Their ways were unusual, but she never felt left out or less than anyone else. It was very unlike the way the servants at the castle used to treat her, and of course, she held a different place among them than in Briar Haven. They spoke her language when needed, but mostly they talked amongst themselves in their own musical language. She learned some of the words, but apparently the pitch and tone of the word could change the meaning altogether. And to make it more difficult, apparently, they spoke several languages and dialects among themselves as they all hailed from different nations and city states.

Sidna the merchant told her that it was just the way it had always been. This had been her mother’s and her mother’s mother’s caravan before her, stretching back in years unnumbered through the matrilineal line. As the folk traveled, they picked up craftsmen and bards in various cities that snaked through the trade roads. It made it far easier to bargain with townsfolk when one of their own numbered among their people and spoke their language.

“Omobirin, _Girl_. Come here.” Sidna sat beside the largest campfire, colorful robes pooled about her feet where she reclined on a mat. Her hair, black as night and wooly, was shorn close to her head. Sidna was the leader of the trading procession, and as such, carried much authority. Anne admired her tall stature and graceful neck, and the way she never seemed to bow under the exhaustion of travel. She thought the older woman was beautiful, with her glossy dark skin and high cheekbones. Unlike some of the other women, she walked about unadorned, lacking the ropes of gold and pearls and gems and silken cords that she saw so often on others in their group.

Mostly though, Anne admired Sidna for being such a competent leader, with her ability to settle disputes between the other members of the caravan or organize camp. She walked with the rest of them, road weary and dust covered, but still carried herself with an air of dignity. Honestly, Sidna reminded her more than a little of Lena. She found herself gravitating towards the woman of a night, even when she wasn’t at lessons with her. Simply put, she reminded Anne of home.

Sidna waved her over to the fire once again. “Omobirin. Kamunu, my trusted clerk, and Olufela, our best bard, have both come to me about you. You were heard playing your pipe by the river last night after scrubbing the pots. Although I am grateful for your gift with sums, I must bow my head to the wisdom of my friends and advisors. Tonight we will not review our trading figures. Tonight, and every night after, I want you to study with Olufela. He knows the music of his own people as well as of everyone we’ve encountered. You will learn the instruments of the trade road and the stories of its folk.”

Kamunu was squatted beside her on the mat, stylus poised over the wax tablet he had been keeping records on. He gave her a quick smile, white teeth flashing, before bending once again to his work. She knew once Sidna finished her conference with him, the clerk would spend hours recording the day’s trades in ink and vellum in his own tent.

The other woman gently boxed Kamunu’s ears. “ _This_ _one_ has been at me since you joined us to train with the minstrels. He will gloat for weeks now that I have acceded to his wishes.” She smiled at him then, letting her affection for her clerk-and her lover-show in her face.

So each evening Anne began her studies with Olufela, a wiry man in his seventies with more gray in his beard than black. He normally dressed simply, in a long white over-tunic, loose pant legs and a brightly colored sash, but he could always be found with at least two or three instruments strung about his person. With him, she learned to play drums of steel and drums of hide. She learned to play harps and guitars and lyres. She learned to play the gourd, which he called the shekere, that was strung with a net of shells belonging to an animal she did not recognize. Anne learned to sing and play at the same time. She learned to play for others while they sang or play along with a group, keeping time for the other musicians.

When Anne learned how to harmonize, she almost cried. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever been a part of. Sometimes, the musicians stood in a circle, holding hands. Everyone would sing their own part in a song, and the music that was born amidst their circle of singers would be a living, breathing, magical thing that she could feel from her toes to her hair, resonating in her chest near her heart.

She tried to teach Margaret about it at night in her dreams, but it’s hard, nigh impossible, to demonstrate harmony with just one singer.

In the months that followed, she also learned their many tongues. At first, it was simple things, as she gestured at a water skin or held a bridle. Later, she learned to translate the many songs or set new lyrics to a tune belonging to a different people. The music helped. She felt she was a part of their troupe.

It took the better part of a year traveling with the tinkers and traders and bards and acrobats. Whenever they would pass through a town, she found she could draw in larger and larger crowds for the caravan, and she reveled in the joy of playing for them. With her songs, she could raise their spirits or bring them to tears, move them in passion or let them feel the sweeping sorrow of loss.

As they moved further south, the villages became towns. The towns became cities. The cities became huge trading hubs. It was passing strange. The first few villages and towns they visited were much like Briar Haven. The people were ruddy cheeked and broad shouldered, wearing beards on their faces and braids in their hair. Their clothing was familiar, but with different patterns of embroidery or pieces of trim. Later on, the people were darker, with bronze and olive colored skin, shiny black hair and dark eyes. Instead of patterns of flowers and birds embroidered on their kirtles, dresses and tunics sported lines and squares and maze patterns. Eventually, they moved even further south beyond the great mountains finding folks with dusky skin and wiry hair, but their features were as varied as flowers in the meadow. Some had broad foreheads and flat noses, and other sharp cheekbones and bowed lips. But mostly, they were everything in between in a great mixture. It made her feel more comfortable in her own skin.

~oOo~

_The woman sat upon the intricately carved chair on a blue velvet cushion. Her tabard was gold-embroidered damask the same color as the cushion over a silk kirtle the same pale blue as the sky in winter. In her left hand, she held a bronze rod cast to resemble the antlered head of some imaginary beast. The woman held her face in studied indifference and brushed heavy golden curls over her shoulder with her right hand._

_“You’ve become better at dream weaving I see,” said Anne as she strode past the threadbare hangings on the wall near the dais._

_The regal woman upon the throne met her eyes and in moments her mask of apathy fell. Her blue eyes began to twinkle and suddenly the queen reigning supreme in the throne room became her mischievous childhood friend again._

_“I need the practice if you’re to lift the curse from our castle soon.” Margaret swept her scepter in an arc and her clothing changed to something more homespun. Something more like what Anne was wearing. “All I have is my imagination, after all, and the brief glimpses I have through your waking eyes. I can feel it. Can you? You’re close.”_

_“You’re always so certain.” She felt troubled by the faith the princess had in her. “I haven’t felt so sure in such a long time.”_

_“I am certain, when it comes down to you.” The young woman, for there was no denying any longer that both had grown to womanhood, gave her friend a look of frank appraisal. “We’re sisters to the end. I know you’ll succeed. But enough of that. Tell me about the city you last traded with? How did they receive your songs?”_

_Anne blushed, ducking her head. “It went well,” she said quietly._

_“Liar! Don’t be so humble. In my dreams, I saw no less than three young men and one exceptionally beautiful woman approach you last night. You’re breaking hearts up and down the Salt Road.”_

_The older girl grinned sheepishly at that. “Aye, so they would have me believe. I’ve even been approached in the camp at night.”_

_Princess Margaret bounded down the dais at that and gave her a friendly punch to her shoulder. “Well? Go on! Why don’t you try them out?”_

_“Who has time for a sweetheart? I have a kingdom to save and a damsel in distress awaiting rescue. Trust me. There are plenty of others willing to walk with them under the starlight.”_

_“Bah, you’re wasting yourself.” Margaret stamped her slippered foot and tugged at her black and yellow braid in frustration. “You better hurry up then and find this sorceress of yours. Otherwise by the time you’re done, no one will want such a dried up old husk of a woman who doesn’t know how to enjoy herself.”_

_Anne could tell her friend was slightly worried beneath her gentle ribbing. “I’ll try. There have been some I wouldn’t mind looking at a second time,” she admitted._

_“Good, it’s settled then. So when will you reach the sorceress? You’ve been gone for months with no more word of this woman and her city than when you left Briar Haven in your dust.”_

_Anne quietly composed her thoughts. Her night time adventures with Margaret always ended this way ever since she embarked with Kamunu and Sidna and the others. “We knew it would take a long time. Kamunu said it would be on the route south.”_

_“Yes, but when?”_

~oOo~

It was when she sat in the fire circle one night, that she learned more of the great sorceress. Anne discovered they would reach her city in three weeks time. In hushed tones, they called her the Dragon’s Lady. She learned that she was not only a sorceress, but a queen in her own right. With dance and drums, she could bring the rain for their crops or bring drought upon their enemies. One time, she had caused the earth to shiver, opening new veins of iron in the mines. She wielded enormous power, and Kamunu assured her that if anyone could help bring down the wall of thorns and wake her princess, it would be the Dragon’s Lady.

“Why is she called the Dragon Lady?” Anne asked, once some of the traveling people departed for their bedrolls for the evening.

“ _Dragon's Lady_ ,” Kamunu clarified. “She is the heir to the great Dragon Goddess Queen, Niameh, who gave birth to all you see.”

As he spoke, he gestured his arms at the sky. “The air in your lungs.” Next he picked up a handful of dirt and let the soil run through his fingers. “The earth beneath your feet.” He poured from his water skin into the coals. “The rains that feed our crops.”

“Niameh was the First,” added Sidna. “She was the first queen, the first woman, the first human, not only of our people but of all peoples. She is the breath in our bodies, the wind in our hair, and the ashes of our dead.  Niameh was all-powerful, but alone, when she took her first steps. So, Niameh had three sons, Biah, Tahnoh, and Kurani.”

“How did she have children if she was alone?” asked Anne.

“Hush, _Omobirin_.” Sidna insisted on calling Anne “ _Girl_ ”, even in her mother tongue. Sometimes it was annoying how similar Sidna was to Lena.

Olufela joined them at the circle around the fire and continued the story in his lilting bardic voice.

“Like the dragon, Niameh can give birth without a husband, and so she took the dragon as her totem and namesake,” Olufela explained. “She lay with all three of her sons and brought forth our queen mothers: Dikeledi the White, Agba Ntu the Grey, and Sauda the Black, who had children themselves and then divided the world into three pieces. Niameh traveled among her peoples, rambling through all her days, while her daughters reigned supreme. And after many years, Niameh returned to her place in the stars, shining down on us all for eternity.”

“What happened to Niameh’s daughters then?”

The three looked to one another and Sidna chose to answer. “Her daughter-queen Dikeledi the White was killed by one of her husbands because he envied her power and how much her people loved her, and ever afterwards, the children of Dikeledi no longer revered the queen-mothers.”

“How horrible!”

“Yes,” said Kamunu, “it is a great sorrow to our people, for now our sisters and brothers are lost to us.” At this, he looked away from her face, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

“Who are those people?” Anne felt there was more to this sad story.

“Why, they are your people, Anne.” For once, Sidna used her given name. “The white children of Dikeledi live in your castle and your town of Briar Haven and many other towns in the North.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know what to say to that. What could she say to that?

“That is one of many reasons why I haven’t brought our caravan to the North in the past. I would always meet your merchants at a trade outpost somewhere between our peoples, just as my mothers before me avoided the North. To see your people is to see heartbreak.”  At that, Sidna, the merchant mistress, reached over and slung an arm around Anne’s shoulder, squeezing her tight to her side.

Kamunu gave himself a shake, and a bright smile cracked his dark face in half as he looked at their group across the flames. “This is why the Dragon’s Lady will be overcome with joy to help you-and help Dikeledi’s children.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This culture is heavily influenced by the travels of Ibn Batuta, a 14th century Arabic chronicler of Asia, Araby, and Africa. 
> 
> This mythology is based on the fact that the Komodo dragon, and actually other monitor lizards as well as many mammals, reptiles, and fish, have the ability of parthenogenesis. This is an actual form of asexual reproduction in which the species does not need males to reproduce. Some species are female only, but the Komodo dragon can reproduce either way. For the dragons, the female will always produce male young in the absence of a male mate. Then she can mate with her offspring, creating a viable population where once there was only a solitary female.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne arrives at the hub of an empire. She meets a sorceress, sees some real dragons, and learns a few things about herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks are owed to my beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie), who is incredibly patient in addition to being wonderfully awesome. All mistakes are my own.

They finally arrived at the city of the sorceress. From far off, the flat topped roofs of Iwalatan appeared golden in the afternoon light. As they neared, Anne was surprised the city was not surrounded by a wall, as many other villages of the north had been. Sidna explained there was no need to wall their cities here as they were at the hub of a vast trading empire of friendly cities as large as all the north combined. The nearest marauders lived half a world away and the only dangers on the trade route were mere interruptions. Anne learned from some of the merchant guards that their roles were purely for their travels in the north, where all the kingdoms and city-states existed at war with one another and the people were not safe to walk unmolested upon the roads.

Arriving as late as they had, the caravan struck camp outside of city limits near a natural spring. She watched in wonder as people filed out of the city and out of sight down the road to the north. Iwalatan was a great trading outpost and had more people in one place than Anne had ever seen before.  The whole city was built amidst a sizable oasis, and she could see date palms rising up to tower over the roofs of some of the smaller buildings.

“Kamunu,” she asked, “why do none of the travelers head to the south?”

He took a moment to answer her, as he was busy fetching his obligatory tablet and stylus from his pack. “There is no place to go to in the south.To go further would lead them to the arid lands of the savanna where the herds graze, and later an expanse of parched earth and sand. The gold and copper of their trade, as well as their farms, are found to nearer the ocean. Only the most experienced go south, as the locations of the oases are kept secret and are known only to a few tribal leaders and their herd animals.”

That evening, Sidna sent a messenger into the city to offer a performance on the morrow for the Dragon’s Lady. The merchant was clear that this was tradition every time they reached the furthest point south on their trade route. They always broke for several weeks to seek provisions for the caravan in addition to playing for the sorceress and giving trade goods as gifts to her court.

The next morning seemed quite hectic although by this time she was accustomed to the bustle of the minstrels as they readied for a show. Olufela helped Anne with her face paint. For today’s performance, she wore the motley: black, white, and grey paint obscured her features in squares and she wore a green kirtle with a pink tabard in the northern style. All around her, the other musicians applied their own make-ups. Some wore ochre in their hair or stripes upon their skin. Olufela had painted the yellow fur and black whiskers of a great hunting cat upon his face and wore a ruff of orange fur about his neck like a collar. Many of the women sported green, grey, and purple scales painted along their necks, shoulders, and arms. She felt the bards enjoyed their spectacle even more than the audiences did.

In the rosy light of dawn, they made their procession through the streets of Iwalatan. Sidna lead the way and wound about the stalls and offices and private homes in a serpentine manner on her way to meet the sorceress. Date palms grew in the intersections of streets and little courtyards and alleyways. Oftentimes, she could see plants with yellow flowers curling at the bases of the trees, heavy with dark green melons that made her mouth water.

Anne caught sight of a forge along the way. The roof was open to the sky, and she saw a dark young man work the bellows. From her place on the cobbled street, she could see the smith pour liquid copper into a mold. He glanced up as they passed and she saw gold dust painted upon his high cheekbones, setting off his ebony skin. The smith had the same wide shoulders and strong arms as Kristoff, and it made her smile at the memory of the man in Briar Haven.

When they reached the plaza, the square so large that she found it difficult to see over the heads of some of the other minstrels. It was hopeless trying to catch a glimpse of the Dragon’s Lady.From the rear of the procession, she heard Sidna’s voice offering obeisance. Then the merchants went forth bringing their goods as tribute: metal workers brought heavy ingots of rare metals, the tailors brought swaths of rich silks and damask, and the bards and minstrels, finally, were able to offer their performance.

She played Kristoff’s pipe with passion, hidden behind the drummers and dancers and tumblers and singers.  One by one, the crowd of performers fell silent as the sorceress waved each away, until Anne was left standing alone-the last player. When the minstrels parted before her, she finally saw the impressive figure of the Dragon’s Lady.  The queen seemed old, but still imbued with power beyond reckoning.  She wore chains about her neck in iron, gold, silver, and bronze.  Copper bracelets banded her arms and she wore gemstones in her tall headdress.  The Dragon’s Lady pointed at her.

“You.  Girl.  Where do you come from?” she said in the tongue of the trade road.  As the sorceress-queen approached her, two large lizards the size of dogs followed at her heels, their forked tongues flicking out to taste the air.

Anne lowered her pipe, and gave her best curtsey.  “I am Anne from Briar Haven.”

The stately woman strode forward and grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up and stand once more. The sorceress spent some moments turning Anne’s face to and fro, and then gestured for her to turn in a circle. When the display was done, the woman spoke again.

“Do you know Sidna the merchant has requested an audience for you?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Anne made to curtsey again, but a gesture from the sorceress stopped her.  “I come seeking aid for my kingdom.  I wish to beg assistance from a mighty sorceress like Yourself.”

“You will have your audience, for I sense there is much and more to your story.”  Without looking, she waved an arm at the rest of the plaza in dismissal.  “Leave us.   _Now._ The presentation is concluded. _”_

The woman turned again to Anne.  “You will come tomorrow at high-sun, and we will speak more.  You will come alone and you will bring your instrument.”  As she spoke, the older woman walked to an elevated chair at the front of the plaza.  Her two lizards climbed to platforms to either side of her chair, turned in circles before settling in position, and seemed to stare at Anne, their tongues flickering in her direction in a way that made her decidedly uneasy. Golden chains wrapped about their feet, and both lizards bore wide collars set with precious stones.  Under their watchful eyes, Anne suddenly realized she was standing there in thick stage make-up and she felt the sweat bead up beneath the paint.

It took some time for Sidna and her people to clear the plaza, but they filed out more quickly than when they had arrived since they no longer had to carry the trade goods with them.  She glanced over her shoulder as she turned the corner to leave and she saw many retainers swarm the offerings that still littered the plaza floor.  These servants were dressed almost as richly as their queen, she thought.

“I informed the Dragon’s Lady of your quest,” Sidna explained once they had returned to camp.  “I told her all about the issue with your people’s home.  She expressed an interest in learning more about your king and the foul magic that has cursed them,”

“How do I call her?  I know from my time in King Albert’s court that each monarch has their preferred title.”

“She is the Dragon’s Lady, and no longer has her given name,” Sidna confessed.  “Once, my mother told me she was called Oluninde, the Goddess has Come.  She is wise beyond her years and is nearing her century.  You would do best to let her do most of the talking and be sure to answer all of her questions.”

The next day, Olufela walked with her to the Palace of the Dragon.He strummed his seven-stringed harp as they walked and told her local children’s rhymes. As he finished each verse, Anne repeated it back to him until she had each word and rhythm correct, as was their habit when she was in lessons. He began fingering the same tune as they strolled past the dun colored buildings. Colorful rugs and sheer panels hung from the lintels and windows, but they didn’t stir. The midday sun was oppressive with no breeze to move the air.

The palace looked much the same as the other buildings in Iwalatan except taller and it sprawled on three sides of the plaza they had been in yesterday. Anne leaned on the wall near the entrance, waiting for one of the guards to return with the gate key.  “Master Olufela, what is that song you keep playing? It sounds very soothing when played with the harp.”

“It is a song of the people that live north of here on the sea.It is a lullaby that they sing to their daughters.It means ‘My daughter, your heart is pure.Good fortune will be upon you and your tribe all your life and your heart will be filled with joy.’  I play this for you now, before you meet the great sorceress, in the hopes it will calm your heart and bring you luck.  It is my prayer for you.”

She leaned forward and placed a kiss upon his weathered cheek.  “Thank you, Teacher.  I feel better already.”

Just then, the guard finally appeared with the key and let her pass. Another man beside him motioned for her to follow him, and she glanced back once more at her mentor. Olufela just nodded at her and made a motion with his hands as if to hurry her along. She grabbed a handful of her braid, now grown very long, and trotted at the man’s heels as he proceeded down a wide hall.

Her guide was quiet, and so Anne felt free to look about her as they walked. Each alcove and wall niche held something different: a tapestry, an urn, sometimes a weapon or a painting of a strange animal. She guessed now that these were relics from all of the empire’s peoples. If that were so, this was a truly rich and powerful queen indeed.

The man finally came to a stop in front of double door of ebony, carved all over with the likeness of the large lizards she had seen in the plaza yesterday. Precious gems had been set in their eyes and gold dust gilt their scales. The effect seemed to make the dragons _move_ , though she knew that was impossible.  The black doors split, and she walked through from the dark hall into sunlight.

In the center of the courtyard, a long table had been set up covered in serving dishes overflowing with fruits of every color. The sorceress was seated at the center of one of the long sides, and she was surrounded by other women and girls who joined her at her meal. The Dragon’s Lady looked up as Anne walked through the door and motioned for her to stand across the table from her.

“Anne of Briar Haven. Play a song for us.”

And so she did. She played the same songs they had played at the royal audience yesterday while the old woman sat and ate and laughed with the others. When the meal was completed, the empress clapped her hands twice as a signal for her to stop.

“Very nice, omobirin. In thanks, I gift you this robe of sheerest linen that my daughter Duhrma embroidered.” A woman old enough to be her grandmother smiled at her. “I want you to come back tomorrow at dawn wearing it.”

Anne walked back to camp sorely disappointed, but the other women of the troupe made much over her beautiful, white gown with palm leaves sewn into the bodice. At daybreak, she returned again, led by the same quiet man through the corridors, walking past the same treasures nestled in dusty niches. This time, Oluninde requested that Anne describe every city and village she had walked through on the way to Iwalatan. The empress brought in a scribe, a young man about her age, to record her tales of the trade road. When she was finished listening to Anne talk, she brought forth some fine leather sandals studded with copper and steel as a reward.

Her routine passed much the same for the next week. The Dragon’s Lady Oluninde would request her presence, Anne would appear and perform as commanded, and she would be sent away after a few hours with another gift dripping with wealth. She began to grow frustrated with this, as she had not even the chance to request aid for Margaret and Schloss Dornbusch yet. At night in her dreams, the princess would reassure her that this was the way of monarchs. The empress and her daughters loved to hear her tales of the people she met on the road and the folk of Briar Haven. One day, she began to tell them of her life at the castle, but the women all seemed so upset to hear how she had been brought up as a companion for the princess.

“Do you know why I invite you here each day, omobirin? Have you discovered why I give to you these fine gifts? Do you not have suspicions?” the sorceress asked her one day.

Anne ducked her head in studied humility. “Who am I to question the actions of the Lady of the Dragon?”

“Do you never wonder what became of your people before you served at court? It is plain to all who look upon your face that you are a daughter of Sauda the Black, yet you come from the lands of Dikeledi the White.”

“I come from no one that matters, Your Majesty, otherwise I would not have been given away to King Albert.” She had always felt that way. If her parents had truly loved her, she would have grown up amongst her own people.

“You grew up serving in the king’s household. Were the cooks and nurses and seneschals and maidservants given wages?”

“Of course.”

“Were _you_ given wages?”

She paused, thinking how best to answer. “Great Lady, I was given to nurse at the same breast with the princess. I was given food and clothing. I was fortunate to sit beside the princess when she was with her tutors.”

“But the king also gives his servants meals and uniforms and private quarters to sleep in, yes? So why were you not given wages? Did you have permission to leave your station if you wished? No? They treated you no better than a prisoner or slave. At least this Lena and Karl you mentioned gave you wages for your work at the inn.”

“I had not thought of it in this way before, Your Grace.”

“No, I do not suppose you would have, being a child. But I digress. The reason I give to you these gifts and invite you each day is that from the first day I met you in the plaza, I suspected your bloodlines. Knowing you better now, and feeling the magic of your music call to mine own, I am certain you are of my house, my flesh, and my blood. While you served the daughter of a small, inconsequential king, you are in fact the daughter of an empire.”

“But I am just Anne.” She felt her blood pound at her temple and she grew faint. “Just plain Anne from Schloss Dornbusch and later Anne of Briar Haven. A lady’s maid, a serving girl, and a traveling minstrel.”

“No, never Anne. For I name you Asaase Afua, and you are my daughter.”

When the Dragon’s Lady made her pronouncement, Anne felt it settle upon her like a heavy cloak. She knew at once it was true. Anne kneeled then, but it was more out of a sudden weakness in her legs than out of respect. Her voice came out as a whisper.“I have sisters? A…a mother?”

Oluninde laughed at that. “More than that, Asaase Afua. Your younger sisters have grandchildren! You were asleep so long. You have nieces and they have children of their own. _You have a family_.”

“How can this be?”

“I was a young queen then, and had not yet convinced my neighbor cities to join me in trade and become the empire you see before you today. Thieves and brigands were plenty, and you were stolen away from me. All these years, I thought you dead. But when Sidna came with her caravan, I felt a strange pull of magic while the minstrels and acrobats performed. I could not connect the girl Sidna had spoken of with the woman who played such bewitching music. My other daughters and granddaughters are in agreement, for they have looked upon your face and seen themselves in your countenance.”

That night, she moved in to the palace with the Dragon’s Lady. Sidna, Kamunu, and Olufela insisted on escorting her back from the camps with a loud and raucous group of minstrels. Large cymbals rang out in Iwalatan in celebration of the lost princess Asaase Afua and the townsfolk cheered out of their windows and over their garden walls.

~oOo~

_When Anne walked into the chamber, she saw Margaret bent over in the clothes chest buried shoulder deep in heavy fabrics. The princess turned and saw Anne in the doorway, giving a squeal of delight and running to give her friend a crushing hug. Anne couldn't help but laugh at Margaret's response and tug at the other woman's braids when they embraced. The two women stepped away from each other and Anne looked at the other princess from under her lashes._

_“This is alright?" She toyed with the cuff of her robe._

_“Oh, Anne. This is more than alright. You’re my best friend, and now you are a princess too. Do you remember when we would take tea in the tower? I had to almost force the other maids from the nursery and get you alone or there would be talk of how I treated you as an equal. When you come home, we'll never have to hide our friendship again." _

_When I come home. Anne felt as though the fist clamped over her heart let go and she let the relief wash over her. “I guess I was afraid of what you would think.” _

_“What I think is…The sorceress must help you now. How could she not give her long lost daughter anything she asks?”  Margaret turned from her then and opened wide the doors of a clothespress that was most definitely not there in the waking world. The princess had assuredly made this dream world her home._

_“I m certain you're right. Why wouldn't she help me?" Anne walked to the side of the curtained bed and sat down, turning one the bangles about her wrist. _

_“You know what this means now, right?" asked Princess Margaret._

_“What?"_

_ “New dresses!"  _

_Anne just groaned aloud and stood patiently while her blonde friend held up one dress after another under her chin. Each one was more elaborate than the last, dripping with yards of lace or gold cord. One even had tiny crystals sewn into the full skirts to make them sparkle like the night sky. That one was her favorite, though she knew it was only the stuff of dreams._

~oOo~

  
She spent her days with her new family, and at first was overcome with the attention. The women were welcoming, but she always felt nervous in their presence. Eventually, Anne began to stand with the older women, _her little sisters,_ at the side of the Dragon’s Lady as the sorceress listened to petitioners from across the empire. She looked just as grand as the daughters of  Oluninde and would wear an iron torque at her neck and copper bands up both forearms. But her feet ached from the sandals, she longed for the sturdy boots Lena had made for her last year, and she felt naked in the thin white linen robe.

Standing there in the costume of a princess as the sorceress listened to so many others ask for aid finally broke something inside of Anne. _I promise._ Her words to Margaret echoed with every heartbeat. She left her place on the dais and walked to the end of the line of petitioners. She saw  Duhrma and Oluninde’s other daughters startle to see her move from the dais, but a quick motion from the empress silenced them. As the hours wore on, she stepped forward in line with the others, waiting her turn.

Finally she was the next in line. She curtseyed low and stayed in obeisance until asked to rise as she had seen the others all do.

“What is it you seek, Asaase Afua?” Her mother had not called her Anne since she moved into the palace.

“Gracious Lady of the Dragon, I seek your aid for a cursed people who have languished beneath a sleeping spell for almost seventy years.”

“The merchant Sidna told me of the Castle of Slumber and the spell that blankets your people. Do _you_ know the cause of this curse?” Her mother’s face betrayed no emotion as she signaled her to continue.

“No, Lady, for magic is strange and wondrous to me. The people linger in a sleep like death, never aging. The waning moon hangs perpetually overhead, though it circles naturally in other lands. A mass of brambles, reaching higher than your tallest building, encircles the bailey and blocks all light. And finally, a wall of choking fog and lightning creates a barrier from the castle and the outside world.”

“This sounds like a powerful nature magic.” The sorceress’ voice grew deeper. “Tell me. Why should I help these people?”

“Your Grace, you have no reason other than I beg it of you. These are good people trapped in evil, and I would have it lifted from them.”

“How do you know their goodness? Have you thought perhaps they brought this curse upon themselves?”

“Forgive me, Empress, but how could Bess the cook or Heinrich the kennel master or even Princess Margaret have brought this on themselves?”

“Asaase Afua, let me tell you a tale:

“When I was a young queen, a handsome prince traveled to Iwalatan.  The prince was of the children of Dikeledi.  Albert was stunning with his yellow gold hair, fair skin, sapphire eyes, and ruby lips.  He had the shoulders of a miner, legs of a hunter, and the long fingers of a flautist.  He sought my trade riches and my political connections and my magic, but he wished to claim me and my city and my children as his own.”

The Dragon’s Lady adjusted a cushion at the small of her back and continued her tale.  “Instead, I took from him his seed to grow a daughter-queen, so that our peoples could once more be united.  When he returned to his own land, he took another woman to wife and had a daughter of his own.  His wife died before he could get a son on her, so he sent his spies to _steal_ you from me, and I was told you had been murdered, guaranteeing her succession as his heir.  In anger, I searched through all the land for Albert.  When I discovered the site of his castle, I _cursed_ it with never-ending sleep as revenge for stealing and, as I thought at the time, killing you.”

“My father? King Albert and, and Princess Margaret? _They_ are my family, too?” Anne didn’t know what to say.  She had finally found a sorceress powerful enough to lift the curse, but she was the woman who had cursed the castle to begin with.   _And she is my mother._   Her own true father had raised her as a servant, lying all those years. “But, Your Majesty, if you please, I’m _not_ dead.  The curse was for nothing.  You can end it now.  Princess Margaret…She may be the daughter of your foe but if the tale you tell is true, she is also my sister. You must release the curse.  Those people did nothing to you.”  At that, the two dragons beside the sorceress hissed at her.  Anne backed up a few steps as her mother narrowed her sharp eyes at her.

“I _must_ do nothing. You may be my daughter, Asaase Afua, but you are not the empress.  I will not release the curse.” 

“Come, Queen-Mother,” Duhrma said.  “You should not bother with this _omobirin_.  It is obvious she takes after her father and not you.” 

Duhrma  helped the empress from the throne and they turned to leave. Anne was struck with realization as her mother and sister turned their backs on her. She ran after the older woman, only to be stopped by two guards who crossed lances before her.

“You knew! You told me I was your daughter and let me believe I had a family. But you knew and you didn’t tell me about the spell. You didn’t tell me you were the one who cursed me and the court. Did you laugh as you dressed me in your be-damned jewelry and finery? Was this all a jest? Did you find it amusing as I begged for help? Tell me!”

But Oluninde and Duhrma didn’t turn back and explain. They continued on from the receiving room behind the stern looking guards. Anne spun on her heel and made for her bedroom. She knew she wasn’t going to be the only angry princess tonight.

~oOo~

_Before she even entered the tower bedroom, Anne could hear the glass break. She opened the door as a bottle of perfume smashed against the wood. A moment later, and the shards had disappeared from the floor and a stoppered bottle sat once more upon the vanity. Such was the way of the dream._

_“You!_ _Your mother. This is  all your fault, Anne._" _Margaret_ _’s blonde hair was in disarray and her eyes were red and puffy from crying._ _“I wouldn_ ' _t_ _be cursed if it wasn'_ _t for you and your mother. MY people would be alive and working and having children and grandchildren right now if YOUR people weren_ _’t witches._ _”_

_“Margaret, please. Please listen.  I, I didn_ _’t know.I promise, I didn_ _’t know. I was still a babe when I was brought here. I didn_ _’t even have a choice! If father hadn_ _’t stolen me, this wouldn_ _’t have happened._ _”_

_The princess-her sister-began pacing once more._ _“You heard her. You heard what that witch said. She stole his seed to birth you. What say did my father have? He wanted marriage, but your mother stole a child from him._ _”_

_“Margaret, please. We_ _’re sisters! Just like you always said. I just need some time to figure out what this means. I have a mother now. And sisters. And a people who want me, not like your father-my father-or the ladies of the castle. I found someplace where I belong for once. Just give me time to find another course to free you. Perhaps I can convince my mother._ _”_

_“Convince her?_ _” The princess_ _’ voice was shrill with anger._ _“She_ _’s the evil witch that cursed this castle. I was a little girl! You heard her. She won_ _’t help. And if you stay by her side in the hope she_ _’ll change her mind, you_ _’ll never keep your promise to me. Stay if you want. Stay with your Lady of the Dragon. Stay with your new family. Stay with the pretty robes and jewels and gold. Let her buy you with the riches of an empire while I grow old and rot in this tower._ _”_

_Anne balled her hands in her hair, willing the tears not to come._ _“This is just like you. You always think of yourself. Did you even stop to consider what this means for me? My world is turned upside down. I grew up scrubbing stone floors and brushing your hair and wearing cast off rags, but I have an empress for a mother and a king for a father. Both my parents caused this evil to change our lives and all you can think of is blaming me. What am I supposed to think of myself, knowing that both of my parents did these evil things? I needed to talk to my friend tonight, but you_ _’re just a spoiled princess._ _”_

_“I always think about myself? I_ _’m trapped in a curse forever. I seem to remember you get to traipse across half the world having adventures and making friends, and of course, not being trapped in an endless sleep_ _.” Margaret punched one finger into Anne_ _’s chest._ _“You have freedom._ _”_

_“Freedom?_ _You think I have freedom?_ _” The words tumbled from her mouth._ _“I was stolen from my homeland, raised in servitude, and made to debase myself before my father and younger sister. From the moment I woke up from the curse, I have done nothing but work towards freeing you and the rest of your people. I served at tables in an inn, I have emptied chamber pots, and I have turned down every suitor. I have thrown myself on the mercies of anyone who would take me in the hopes it would lead me to someone who could save you. I have been fortunate to have not fallen in with folk who would treat me badly, but I still took those chances, knowing the risk. And all this time, you played at calling us sisters and friends, but you never forgot that you were a princess and I was a lowly commoner whose sole purpose was to do as you bid."_

_“If you had never been born, my father_ never _would have had to steal you to preserve my rights as heir._ _”_

_“If_ you _had never been born, I would have been the child heir that united two kingdoms, just as my mother planned. I_ _’m the eldest, remember sister?_ _”_

_“Go! Just go! I wish you_ had _never been born. Then I would never have been cursed, and the people of Schloss Dornbusch would be living happily today. You_ _’ve brought nothing but misery since the day I met you."  Ma_ _rgaret pumped her arms in anger and balled her hands into fists, but she didn_ _’t touch Anne again._

_“Fine,_ " _Anne said quietly._ _“You want me gone? You wish I_ " _d never been born?_ _”_

_“Yes._ "

_She reached up and hurriedly undid the braid from her hair, separating the blonde from the black. The frayed green ribbon fell to the tower floor as Anne held the blonde lock in her shaking hand, reaching out towards her younger sister._

_“As you wish, Your Highness._ _”_

_She gave an exaggerated curtsey and then turned her hand over, letting the hair fall to the floor._

_~ oOo~_

Anne awoke with a gasp in her new room at the palace. The curtain flapped lazily at the window, but the night breeze did nothing to cool her hot flesh. Her head hurt and she reached up a hand, only to realize she’d completely pulled her braid loose in her sleep. She pushed off the pallet and sat up, staring blankly down at the knotted hair torn from her head. During her nightmare, she had not only pulled free the blonde hair belonging to Margaret but also tore her own black hair free from the scalp. Bits of tissue clung to the end and she felt wetness seep down near her ear. A light touch showed her fingers come away pink with blood.

She took a few breaths and glanced around her shadowed quarters. Almost everything belonged here in Iwalatan. She dropped the sticky shift to the floor mat and opened her chest. Finding a burgundy colored robe and navy blue wrap for her head, she pushed the rest of her things onto a square of cloth and quickly tied up the corners. She was almost out the door before she ran back to the pallet and grabbed the braided hair. She stuffed it into her improvised sack and left. The guards did not question her as she left through the postern gate, as no one asked questions of Oluninde’s children.

Sidna’s camp was still in the same place outside the city near the spring. It was easy to find her tent in the dark, and she scratched at the fabric until Kamunu ducked his head through the flap to discover her. She pushed past him and dropped to her knees where Sidna sat up sleepily. The merchant didn’t say a word as Anne wrapped both arms around her and sobbed into her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iwalatan is based on Oualata or Walata, as described by Ibn Battuta who traveled there in the 1352. You can find a translation of his travel journals [here](http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1354-ibnbattuta.asp). Iwalatan was indeed the center of a great trade empire, and it was only in the 14th century that it joined the Mali empire. 
> 
> Also, I wanted to remind readers that this is an invented matriarchal religion based on the [reproductive methods](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon#Reproduction) of the Komodo Dragon. I do not intend offense toward any of the people of Mauritania or their religious practices.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne comes to terms with her parentage and takes control of her own destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to my beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie) for keeping me motivated and on track. I would have given up on this story long ago if she hadn't encouraged me to continue. Any mistakes are my own.

The next morning, the caravan gave her a wide berth as she stayed hidden in Sidna’s tent.  Anne was reluctant to go back to her mother’s palace and face the stern empress, but she was just as afraid to think that perhaps she would not be welcome back.  No summons came from the Dragon’s Lady in the days that followed and her despondence grew.

Sidna just clucked her tongue at her as she worked an ivory comb through what was left of her hair.  “Anne, this really is a mess.  You should let me trim the rest.  I promise you’ll feel the better for it.”

She reached up a hand and ghosted it across the raw patch where her braid once was.  Her scalp was still tender and so was her heart.  “Maybe you have the right of it, Mistress Sidna.  It is so hot here in the south, and…”  And perhaps if she cut off the other braids, she would not miss the plait of Margaret’s hair.

“You know the women that carry water from the spring?”  Anne asked.

“The girls?  What of them?”

“I think I’d like to wear my hair like that.”  She’d seen the girls that came every day with the earthenware pots, their brightly patterned skirts flapping at their ankles.  The younger ones wore their heads mostly shaved clean, with tufts on the side or crown left to grow long and braided.

“That is a style for children.  You are a woman grown.”  The merchant adjusted her seat on the cushions and stretched out her legs to either side of Anne as she continued to comb out the snarled locks of hair.

“No, Sidna.”  She reached back and stopped Sidna’s hand, holding tight to her fingers.  “I realize more than ever how much of a child I have been.  Shave it off.  I will start again.”

She spent the next several days in the city wandering past stalls and lingering outside the public houses thinking of her years at the Kammerhund.  The homesickness washed over her in a way it hadn’t in the last year she’d been on the road and she braved a walk inside one of the inns to speak with the proprietor.  It didn’t take much to convince the man to allow her to play in the evenings since she volunteered to play only for the patrons’ gifts.

Whispers around town spoke of the lost princess and the rumors of her absence had her aging a hundred years in a day, transforming into a dragon, or disappearing as a wisp in the night.  Luckily, the people of Iwalatan did not recognize the new minstrel at the inn as the lost daughter returned home because Anne now wore her scalp shaved clean save her crown, leaving a single thick plait to hang down past her right ear.  Frankly, she enjoyed the anonymity and played every night.

She needed to do something to take her mind off of sleep.  When night fell and the stars stretched out overhead Anne felt anxiety as she waited for sleep to wash over her.  She hadn’t dreamed once since her argument with Margaret, or at least she hadn’t had one of her _true_ dreams.  She assumed now it had something to do with their bound hair, a magic that tethered them across the miles.  Unfortunately, she had never learned of spells or enchantments, and now Anne feared she had lost her chance to learn from her mother and perhaps lost her connection to her half-sister forever as well.  To soothe her apprehension about the loss of her dreams, she worked at  Sidna’s camp during the day and then played in the tavern all evening until complete exhaustion took her and she slept the sleep of the dead.

More and more, she dogged the heels of Kamunu as he arranged their travel back north, for the clerk had told her the wagons would be leaving in two more weeks.  She also found time to peek in at the forge where she’d seen the dark skinned smith gilt with gold dust.  Anne learned his name was Siddig and he was one of the few smiths to craft with steel in Iwalatan rather than bronze.  It only served to remind her of shadowing Mistress Lena as she shopped around Briar Haven on errands, or of watching Annette and Kristoff at work in the smithy.

She found the master bard surrounded by students as he instructed some of the dancers how to play the _shekere_ while weaving a foot pattern on the ground.

“Teacher?” she asked, getting Olufela’s attention.

The young performers were glad of the distraction, and sidled off to gossip about the lost princess that hung about their camp.

She bowed to her mentor in respect.  “You helped me once before with my performance paint for the caravan audience.  I would have your help again.”

“Omobirin, it would please me.  What is your wish?”

The next morning, Anne stalked outside of the Palace of the Dragon, calling out her mother’s name.  The empress did not appear, but Duhrma peered over the wall with a guard over each shoulder.

“Omobirin!  Have you returned to your Queen-Mother?  Do you see now her wisdom?”

“Sister Duhrma!  Hear me now, and be our mother’s ears.”  Anne presented herself dressed in all the gifts she had received since arriving.  “You call me Asaase Afua, Goddess of the Earth.  The Lady of the Dragon has dressed me in the manner of your people as though to cover my very nature.”  She did a slow turn, arms held out, and let her sister get a good look at her.

“I am your blood.”  She pulled off the arm bands one by one and dropped them in the dust.

“I am your flesh.”  She removed the iron torque from about her neck and threw it against the bars of the palace gate.

“But I do not have your heart.”  She kicked off her studded sandals and they lay in a heap at her feet.

“I reject you and your vengeance.”  She bent at the waist and grabbed the hem of the robe Duhrma had embroidered for her.  With one swift movement she pulled it over her head and let the wind catch it from her fingers.  Beneath the white linen, she was wearing the traditional clothes of the north.

“I am the blood of my father.”  She untied the apron and let it flutter to the ground.

“I am the flesh of my father.”  She loosed the ties of the kirtle and stepped free from the skirts, letting it pool at her feet.

“But I do not have his heart.”  Anne tore the thin fabric of the underclothes.  “I reject him and his thieving ways.”

Olufela had painted a multitude of scales on her skin with gold dust, just as she’d seen the dancing girls and the smith paint on their own skin.  Now naked, Anne strode forward and placed her hands on her hips.  She shimmered in the afternoon light and she seemed to ripple with every movement.  The effect of gold scaling and dark skin lent her the appearance of the gilt dragons carved into those ebony doors she had passed through for so many weeks.

“I stand before you not as Asaase Afua of Iwalatan and not as Anne of Briar Haven but as the Heir of the Dragon, the mingled bloodlines of Dikeledi and Sauda.  My heart is sore that I could not know what it was to be a daughter of your people, but there is no amount of magic that can make it otherwise.  I _will_ find a way to free the people you have cursed and I will do it without your help if I must.  Come out,  Oluninde, and look upon the daughter you have made.”

A shout sounded on the other side of the wall, and Duhrma ran inside out of Anne’s sight.  She waited the rest of the day and into the night until moonrise with feet braced apart and hands fisted on her hips, but no one came out to her.  Disappointed, she turned back towards camp, leaving her clothing in the dirt.  Olufela scrambled up from where he’d dozed against the palace wall and matched strides with his student as she walked back with her chin held high.

Morning roused them to the sound of slow drums, and the criers from Iwalatan told them the Dragon’s Lady had died in the night.  Anne slumped where she still lay upon the sleeping mat, her scene of defiance from the day before running through her head.  She didn’t even get to say goodbye to her mother, and now those were the last words she had heard.

A contingent of guards had been sent from the palace for her, so Anne pulled a loose tunic over her head, wrapped a braided sash around her waist, and walked barefoot like the camp children.  She was led through to the same courtyard past the door of ebony and golden scaled dragons.  Inside Duhrma waited alone seated on a bench beneath a date palm.  She raised her head when she was escorted in by the guards, and Anne could see her sister had been crying.

“Asaase Afua,” Duhrma began stiffly.  “ _Anne_. You are my near sister, and the elder.  By blood rights, you have a claim to the throne.  What say you?” 

She stood there a moment, gaping like a fool and then shut her mouth with a _clack._   She bowed and then moved forward to take her sister’s hands in her own.  “Duhrma, I am so sorry.  I don’t know what to say now that the empress has died.  Be assured, I only claim to want help in saving the people I left behind.  I made a promise and I mean to keep my word.”

The look on the other woman’s face softened.  “Come, sister, let us know one another.  I am not so fierce as our late Queen-Mother.”  The older woman linked her arm with Anne’s.  “You know you can claim either throne or even both for your own, if it were your wish.”

“No.  I meant what I said yesterday about rejecting both my mother and my father, but I did not know our mother was ill.  Perhaps I would have chosen different words yesterday and spoken less harshly.”  She felt her throat constrict as she talked.

The older woman just waved a hand at her.  “Oluninde smiled when she heard you shout from below her window.  When you first came to us, she was afraid you had the broken spirit of a bond servant, humble as you were.  You showed yesterday that you truly have the spirit of Niameh our dragon goddess.  And most importantly, _you_ made yourself into the woman you are today.”

Hearing Duhrma’s words eased Anne’s heart, and she cried then for the mother she never had a chance to know but who still died proud of her.

“Hush.  She is with Niameh now and walks among the stars, waiting for the day her daughters join her.”

Iwalatan crowned a new Lady of the Dragon one week later.  Anne was there standing with her younger sisters and nieces as they watched Duhrma ascend the dais and sit with a dragon on either side.  She used Kristoff’s pipe to play a tune she had written especially for her sister’s coronation, and this time she felt the music well up from within her in a way she had never felt before.  The people cheered as the clouds parted over Duhrma’s head, and bright rays reached down from the sky to light upon her gemmed headdress.  They whispered it was the hands of Nieameh and Oluninde bestowing their blessing on the new Dragon’s Lady.

“Duhrma, what can you tell me of our family’s magic? Of the curse?  I can use whatever you know when I go north again.”

Her Sister-Queen grinned and grabbed her arm.  “It was _your_ magic today at the ceremony, I am sure of it.  Our mother, like you, could control the weather.  When she was younger, the sorceress had power over the natural elements like wind and rain and crops.  She could also set fire to men’s hearts or soothe the sorrowful.”

“And apparently she could spell them asleep and grow a hedge,” Anne said sarcastically.

“Yes, she could do that as well.  But her magic was different from yours.  Our mother could not hum a tune or pluck a single note on harp.  That, my dear sister, is uniquely yours.”

“So what happened?  Why did I wake up?  I’ve wondered at that for almost a decade now.”

“A decade?  That makes sense.  Our mother had a stroke nine years ago, and ever afterwards she had difficulty with her magic.  She said it was like trying to hold the morning mist in her hands.”  Duhrma leant forward, searching Anne’s eyes intently.  “I wasn’t even born yet when you were taken.  You know this, yes?  I was born after the curse.”

She patted the new queen’s hand, spotted with age and wrinkled.  “Yes.  I hold no one responsible for the curse other than my parents.”

“Good.  It troubled me to think you would hate your family for the vengeance our mother took.”

“So I awoke when Oluninde became sick but no one else did.  Why have I dreamed of Princess Margaret ever since?”

“Dreams?  You never told us of dreams.  They are _true dreams?_ ”  At Anne’s nod, the queen continued, “The magic is only in you.  _I_ do not even have magic while you live.  Do you have anything belonging to the sleeping princess?   A baby tooth perhaps?  Clippings of her nails?  Sometimes our mother would use these things to visit the dreams of our ambassadors when they traveled to other cities.”

She reached a hand up and clutched the braid over her right ear.  It was long and black, with not a trace of the blonde strands of the princess. _That_ was still shoved in the bottom of her pack.  “I did not know.  I, I braided our hair together before I left  Schloss Dornbusch.  We each have a blonde and black plait.”

“Wait.  The princess has a lock of your hair?  This is more dangerous than you can know.”

“What does _that_ mean?  She is asleep with the rest of the court.”

“Yes, she is sleeping still, but having a piece of you forces time to pass for her as it does for you,”  Duhrma explained.  “If you don’t free her, she will die of old age, having never woken.  There is no danger to the rest of the court.”

“Will you help me?”

“I can send you back with the caravan and perhaps some supplies or assistants,” said Duhrma, “but only you can break the curse. You carry the magic in your blood, and if the tales tell true, your music expresses it.”

That night, Anne dug the tangled lock of Margaret’s hair from her pack.  There wasn’t much left, as the strands had frayed and split over the years.  She rubbed a callused palm over her shorn scalp and then undid her own braid before weaving her sister’s hair with her own and tying it off.

_~ oOo~_

_Anne walked the cold stone halls and her footsteps echoed hollowly as she searched the keep.  It had been more than a month since she had seen Margaret, and she saw that time had not been kind in the dream.  Before, the sun always shined in the bailey, the trees blossomed, and the well burbled in the springyard.  She was worried to find the motte-and-bailey in darkness, the snow calf deep as it was when she left all those years ago, and clouds hung low beneath a waning moon._

_As she crossed the bailey and cracked the door at the tower_ _’s base, her dress in the dream flickered between her usual woolens and the colorful robes of Iwalatan.  The climb to the nursery took longer than usual as the stairs spiraled away beneath her feet for an interminable age.  Gripping her braid and gritting her teeth, Anne was able to force the steps to stop growing in number._

_She knocked on the plank door at the top and then slipped it open on hinges that sagged with age.  The room was shrouded in spiders_ _’_ _webs and frost dusted the sills as they had in memory.  She spotted the unmoving form beneath the coverlet and she ran to Margaret_ _’s side as she had once before, but before she could shake the young woman awake, the princess opened her eyes._

_“I didn_ _’t think you would come back.  I wouldn_ _’t blame you if you didn_ _’t come back.  Are you some shade come to tempt me?_ _”_ _Margaret_ _’s voice came as a croak._

_“No sister,_ _”_ _Anne said.  She reached out a hand and brushed the hair back from her little sister_ _’s forehead._ _“I came back for you."_

_Margaret bolted upright in bed and wrapped her arms around her._ _“I didn_ _’t mean it!_ _”_ _the younger princess apologized between sobs._ _“I didn_ _’t want you to go.  I_ _’m glad you were born.  I_ _’m glad you_ _’re my sister.  I was jea-jealous that you were free of the curse but I always looked up to you._ _”_

_“ Shh,_ _” Anne_ _said as she rocked her sister, just as Sidna had rocked her one month ago._ _“I know, I know.  I am a better person because of you.  Maybe I resented it sometimes, but I always knew I needed to be a better person so I could take care of you.  You make me strong."_

_Margaret sniffled and drew a wrist under her nose and then wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand._ _“So what do we do now?_ _”_

_“The Lady of the Dragon is dead._ _”_

_“Your mother?_ _But_ _…”_ _Margaret_ _’s voice shook as she asked.  Sometimes Anne forgot that her half sister had lost her mother at birth.  She probably knew better than anyone what that meant to Anne to lose her mother so soon after finding her._

_“But I don_ _’t need her._   We _don_ _’t need her.  I_ _’m coming for you.  I promise._ _”_ _Those words had followed her for nine years.  It was time to make good on her vows._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out [this post](http://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/post/79894449659/the-african-context-of-hair-in-ancient-egypt) about African hair. It was the inspiration for Anne's makeover.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anne returns to the castle to rescue the sleeping princess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many thanks to [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie) who has been such a wonderful beta, sounding board, and voice of reason. All mistakes are my own.

The Kammerhund was quiet, Anne thought as she sat on the bench with her back resting against the table. Many of the minstrels had gone off to the outskirts of town to practice, leaving her alone with Sidna and Lena. The two women leaned on the plank table top, each with a mug of tea in hand. She had the distinct feeling they were competing in some way.

“So my little bookkeeper runs away with you and you bring me back a princess.” Lena grinned over the rim of her cup at them.

“No, Lena. I brought you back an _empress_ ,” Sidna said proudly, “but she’ll have none of it. Tell me, did she learn her sums from you? She would have made a fine merchant if my men had not stolen her away to make music.”

“Anne is gifted, but headstrong. Many of the women in Briar Haven learned to keep their own books because of her. She insisted on teaching them instead of charging them to help with sums,” Lena explained. “She would never have made a good merchant, as you suggest. She would have put herself out of business. Did she give you any trouble?”

It made her uncomfortable, in a way, to have two such very important women in her life come face to face. She left them there as they compared notes and traded stories about her.

She made her way into the courtyard behind the inn. Karl and Kamunu came chattering from the stables, a long legged pup hanging from the dark-skinned clerk’s arms. The huntsman was animatedly discussing the best ways to raise the dog.

“You mean you don’t eat them?” asked Kamunu.

“What?!” Karl’s grin fell and he anxiously tried to pry the dog from the clerk’s arms.

“Oh, the look on your face!” Kamunu laughed, and bent over trying to catch his breath. The dog wriggled in his grasp and began licking every bit of his face it could reach.

“Does Sidna know you’re buying some of Master Karl’s _hunden_?” she asked him.

“It’s an investment,” he whined as he set the dog on the ground. It immediately ran to sniff at Anne’s boots.

“At least wait until the return trip. We leave before daybreak tomorrow. And besides,” she looked over at Master Karl who had been like a father to her for eight years, “you’ll want the whole litter. They hunt better as a pack.”

She turned to leave through the courtyard gate, but she saw the huntsman’s nod of respect all the same.

When she had returned to Briar Haven, the townsfolk had come out to greet the caravan, delighted to see Anne again. When they had learned she was with them, someone had sent the children running to the inn to fetch Mistress Lena and Master Karl. It didn’t take long for the truth to spread through town about her birthright.

She had seen it in their faces as they each learned the tale. Suddenly, she had found herself pressed in on from all sides as her friends from childhood all wanted to hug her, touch a ribbon or maybe her sash. Although she had lived with the truth for a year now, it had been strange to see it through their perspective. _A real princess_.

She made her way to Annette’s forge, and sure enough, Kristoff was at work in the smithy. She wanted to speak with her old friend, for she had thought of him often over the past two years. She was delighted to learn he was not alone. On the way north, she had told many of her friends of the magic pipe he had made for her, and she saw now that he endured a crowd of admiring minstrels watching him work. Standing there behind her fellow musicians, she could see his face flushed red as he showed the women some of the other instruments he had made in the time she was away. She slunk away still unseen as she heard them begin whispering in their own tongue about the breadth of his shoulders and how he had pretty eyes. Anne grinned to herself to think her friend would not be lonely much longer.

That night at the inn, things were more subdued than she recalled from past years. Although everyone was excited about her homecoming, they knew what the coming days entailed. Some of the miners had filed in from the mountain and drank at their usual tables, sparkling under a dusting of salt crystals, but most of the folk retired early, knowing that come dawn she would leave once more.

Lost in reverie, she didn’t notice at first when two young people joined her at table. The man, Basir, tapped the tin cup under her nose to get her notice. She shot her eyes over to him to see his grin split his brown face. He had dark eyes and lashes with sandy brown skin and an aquiline nose. The woman with him, Fayruz, looked much the same, but her hair hung in ringlets where his was straight and fine. They were cousins and Anne’s sister Duhrma was their grandmother.

“Greatmother, why do you not play your pipe this evening?” Fayruz asked her.

“Please stop calling me that. You’re no older than me!” It was frustrating to have these young people follow her around calling her _Greatmother_ all the time. All of her brothers and sisters through Oluninde had great sprawling families while Anne had been sleeping for sixty years, and some had chosen to send their children north with her return.

“Princess? Empress?” Basir said, and he raised his brows in question, but his mouth smirked in jest.

She just groaned and rolled her eyes. “I’m not playing tonight because…because it’s too close. The castle, the curse, my sister and our father. Everything is too close right now. Let the other minstrels play. Don’t you have someone else to bother for the evening?”

Her nephew- _great great nephew?_ \- gestured towards the common room. “Who shall we sit with? Your salt miners? My near-sister here might like to make eyes at one or two of them, but they do not know her tongue nor can we speak theirs. Shall we sit with the merchants? No, Greatmother, for they are forging business deals this evening with contracts that will hold for five generations or more. Perhaps we’ll curl up in the rushes with your immense dogs, though I do not relish the thought. They look like they could take down a desert cat.”

“And they smell,” Fayruz added, wrinkling her nose.

Anne saw that the girl did indeed watch a couple of the miners fresh down from the mountain. She nudged her niece with a sharp elbow and whispered, “See the one with hair that shines like bronze? His name is Willem and he is the best dancer.”

She leaned forward then and straightened the necklace of turquoise stones set in a silver net at her throat. “Your Greatmother tells you to go ask Sorella if she will play a jig,” she commanded with a grin.

When she heard the first notes from Sorella’s lyre she strode over to Willem’s table and grabbed him up from his seat. She gave another nod to Basir who took Fayruz’s hands in his own. The two couples began to reel about on the floor and some of the serving maids set down platters and grabbed up Master Karl and Josef. She even saw Kamunu bring Sidna to the floor. On a quick pass, Anne let go of Willem’s hands and Basir traded his cousin for her. They laughed together at the switch and watched the two young folk blush their way through the first few steps before finding their own rhythm. Anne hadn’t lied. Willem was the best dancer in Briar Haven. For tonight at least, it didn’t matter that they couldn’t speak a word to one another.

“Auntie Anne?” Basir jested.

She punched him in the shoulder lightly.

“Cousin, then. Cousin Anne, you are crafty. You would have made a fine Dragon’s Lady, but don’t tell my grandmother I said such things.” He led her back to their table so they could spy and laugh at Fayruz and Willem as they flirted terribly with broken language and hand gestures.

“Do you miss Iwalatan?” she asked him.

“No. Duhrma may be my grandmother, but I was born and raised to the east outside the empire. One of her sons married my mother in another land to help secure water rights along a trade route.”

“How very…practical.” It seemed rather sad.

“The Dragon’s Lady Oluninde built her empire on blood ties and trade profits. From what I’ve read of my mother’s people, it was a fair sight better than how they managed things before.”

“Blood ties and trade profits, hmm? Is that why I suddenly have a profusion of nieces and nephews underfoot?”

He looked up at her from beneath his lashes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, cousin. But if there happen to be stray princesses lying about in the north, who can say what the future will bring when a handsome prince strolls by?”

Anne was beginning to like this feeling of having so much family. She imagined her friendship with Basir was akin to what it must feel like to have a brother, to be teased mercilessly but know the she could depend on his loyalty. If Schloss Dornbusch had never fallen to the curse, she might never have known any of these good people that filled the Kammerhund tonight. A tear leaked from the corner of her eye, and she excused herself and headed through the kitchens toward the back stairs that led up to her small room.

~oOo~

_The two young women sat upon the low stone wall that surrounded the spring. They dangled their legs in the cool pool and watched as the sunlight dappled low hanging branches with bright spots. The breeze felt warm as it ruffled the girls’ skirts and played with the ends of their braids._

_Margaret had been quiet for some time, so Anne cupped her hand and swept a swath of cold water straight at her sister._

_“Daydreaming?” “_

_It’s really almost done, isn’t it? Everything will be different.” Margaret toyed with the hem of her sleeve._

_“What are you worried about?”_

_“What if they don’t like me?” whispered Margaret. “I mean…I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s been just you and me for so long now…”_

_“They’ll love you just as much as I do.” She leaned over, wrapped one arm around the princess’ shoulders and squeezed her reassuringly._

_“Thank you, Anne, for never giving up.” Blue eyes met brown and both women smiled. “Without your determination…”_

_“I promise we’ll see each other soon.”_

_Margaret didn’t say anymore. She didn’t need to. Anne reached out a hand and intertwined her fingers with her sister’s, content to laze away what time they had left in the dream._

~oOo~

The trip back to the wall seemed strange to her and filled her with anticipation. It had been ten years since her escape and more than two years since she had made this trip west. She spotted the abandoned farms she passed then and found certain boulders and copses of trees to be familiar. The way was made merry surrounded by the minstrels, and some of the folk of Briar Haven had elected to join them as well. Lena and Karl both accompanied her, leaving Trina to take care of the Kammerhund with Fayruz staying behind as a guest of the inn. At night, they all mixed freely about the campfires, exchanging stories of their lands and trading songs of long ago. Each evening, she would pull the pipe from the pocket of her skirts, turning the metal over and over in her hands, but she still didn’t raise the instrument to her lips.

On the third day out from town, the wall of brambles and fog rose up before the caravan, lightning still roiling among its low clouds. This was the stuff of her nightmares. She saw this barrier every time she closed her eyes, knowing it kept her from her sister. Turning, she glanced back down the road and saw it filled with her friends new and old both. They spread out in the meadow to either side and she felt a bit disoriented when she spotted a lazy bumble swirl in a dust funnel. _Could it be the same bumble she saw when she first found freedom?_

Anne licked her lips, raised her pipe, and began to play. She played songs she learned in the tavern as a girl. She played songs she learned with the minstrels. She played songs she learned sitting by Margaret’s side all those years ago.

Once Anne began to play a different song, a song of friendship and sisterhood, her friends from the caravan joined her. The raised their instruments and their voices to the harmonies she had written. Her mentor and friend Olufela stood next to her with his seven-stringed harp. In the months on the road back to Briar Haven, the two had spent many an evening crouched over wax tablets, scribbling notes and phrases down until she felt it was right. Until she felt the music reverberate in her heart.

She played for her sister, the princess in the castle tower. She played for her other sister, Duhrma the new Dragon’s Lady. She played for Dikeledi, Agba Ntu, and Sauda. She played for Oluninde, her mother the sorceress. She played for Niameh, the great Goddess-Dragon of the stories. And she played for both her selves, Anne and Asaase Afua.

While she played, the lightning stilled and the clouds becalmed. A great wind spiraled up from the earth and swept around her, whipping her skirts about her legs. The fog rolled back from the thorns and the brambles grew away from the road. Anne lowered her pipe once the road was clear before them and the caravan moved forward. It took a few days at their walking pace to reach the bailey wall.

Upon reaching the stonework, she saw the guardsmen just as she had left them, still slumped in the curse of sleep. Anne hadn’t expected this. She thought once her music-magic made the thorns shrivel and snow melt that her work would be done with the curse.

She held up a hand and signaled the procession to stay where they were. Folk immediately began to strike a camp outside the walls and busy themselves, knowing enough to stay out of her way. Anne stood with feet braced apart and arms crossed as she glared at Schloss Dornbusch still silent with sleep.

“Cousin,” Basir said, breaking into her thoughts, “Anne, can we help?”

Anne turned to glare at her nephew and saw he was joined by Lena and Karl, Sidna and Kamunu, Olufela and Kristoff, and many of her other close friends. Her retort died before it passed her lips when she saw them eager to help and she just smiled, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“It’s never easy, is it?” She shook her head in answer to her own question. “No. This is something I must do myself.”

She left her companions behind and pried open the sentry gate, slipping through past the snoring guards. She checked each one as she moved through but none stirred. When she reached the bailey she raced across and threw open the door at the base of the tower. As she rushed up the spiral staircase she thought everything was smaller than she expected. At the top of the tower, she found Margaret still in bed as she had left her.

Margaret had aged as Duhrma had warned her. The princess was now eighteen and looked different than in their shared dreams. Beneath the coverlet, she still wore the pink nightdress. Only now, it barely reached past her hips. The silken cord that tied the bodice had frayed and broken over the years and the chiffon was thin with age. Her blond hair lay in profusion about her head on the pillow. A thick braid a few feet long snaked over the sleeping woman’s shoulder, and only the last several inches were plaited with Anne’s black hair and tied with a pink bow.

Anne stepped gingerly through the room, and the stale rushes cracked beneath her booted heel. She sat on the corner of the mattress and dust rose up from the duvet, causing her to sneeze. As she bent over the bed, tears fell from her dark eyes and landed on her sister’s cheek. They sparkled there like stars. Anne tried waking her as she had a decade ago, but Princess Margaret would not shake awake.

Remembering her magic, Anne raised the pipe to her lips once more. She played with all the passion of her love for her friend and sister. It seemed she played for hours with no change. Anne’s lips grew chapped and her throat dry. When she grew tired from playing, she lowered her pipe, sobs shaking her body.

“I’m so sorry, Margaret. I promised you, but I could not wake you. I love you. You will always be my friend and my sister.” She bent again to gather her into her arms, hugging Margaret close and kissing her sister in grief.

Her broken promise was like a knife in her heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with me, everyone. Just two more chapters left.
> 
> Comments are appreciated. I'd love to know what you think.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The curse is lifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie) who has been the most supportive and helpful beta this fledgling writer could ask for. All mistakes are my own.

“Anne!” Margaret gasped awake and clutched her arms about Anne.

She yelled in joy and began rocking her sister, unable to stop grinning through her tears.

“Anne, I can’t breathe,” her sister wheezed.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just, just so happy. I thought I couldn’t wake you! The thorns pulled back and the snow melted, and then when I came back to the castle, everyone was still cursed.” Anne began to hiccough from crying.

“You came. I knew you would. I dreamed of you and saw your struggle to free us.” She sat upright, blinking the sleep from her bright blue eyes, and held Anne at arms’ length. “You look…so different.”

“So do you,” she laughed. “I guess in our dreams we imagine ourselves differently.” She reached out and smoothed the golden hair back from the other woman’s forehead. Margaret’s eyes didn’t seem so large now and her jaw had squared out some. Her cheeks looked hollow too, but what did she expect? Her sister had been asleep for seventy years. There was only so much magic could do.

She couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Her cheeks began to hurt and they both dissolved into relieved giggles. Anne threw a pillow at her sister as they used to long ago, and apparently they were not too grown up for a pillow fight because it went on for some time. After a few moments of sisterly cajoling, they turned serious. Brown eyes met blue.

“We need to speak with Father. He needs to explain himself for what happened. What happened to you. What happened to the castle. What happened to your mother. Why we’ve been asleep for seventy years! He needs to answer for all of it.”

“He was never Father to me,” Anne grimaced. “Not really.”

“And that’s _exactly_ why we need to face him. He _stole_ you, Anne. _He stole you and raised you as less than a servant_.”

Anne patted the satchel that she’d brought with her into the tower. “I know. I’ve had a year to think about that. I have a plan for the _king_ and I want to wake the rest of the castle before going to him. But first...” She grinned wickedly at her sister. “You _really_ need to brush your teeth. And perhaps put on something decent to wear, unless you want to greet your subjects in your nightdress.”

While Margaret washed up, Anne ran out to the sentry gate and beckoned her procession inside the bailey. She bade them wait and ascended the tower once more to help her sister dress. Margaret insisted on wearing her hair just like Anne’s, so they arranged the long hair into a single plait on one side of her head. The braid hung heavy over her right ear, and the black strands tucked into the plait only seemed to make her golden hair glow all the more.

They walked arm in arm down the spiral staircase of the tower, and when they emerged in the bailey to the party of rescuers, they were greeted by cheers and the cacophony of many instruments. “Princess Margaret,” Basir hailed and then he swiftly bent the knee. The rest of the folk quickly followed his suit. Margaret leaned over and whispered in Anne’s ear, “Which are Lena and Karl? Sidna and Kamunu? Where is your teacher?”

She pointed them out to her sister, and Margaret walked over to them each in kind. She curtseyed low, the hem of her dress dragging in the dirt of the bailey. As she stood, Margaret grabbed their hands in thanks, leaning forward to press the kiss of peace on their cheeks. Anne just grinned from behind her, proud that her sister would thank those who made her rescue possible but also tickled that she completely ignored Basir’s attempt at gallantry.

Anne stepped forward, raising her hands in the air until they all quieted down. “Thank you all for coming. As you can see, everyone is still fast asleep here at Schloss Dornbusch. I need the help of each one of you. As I wake them, I will need someone to help the person adjust to the curse and what happened to them and the countryside. Some of you folk from Briar Haven may even have a relative or two amongst the castle folk. Those that speak the common tongue will be most helpful. Those that cannot…well, Kamunu will see to it you have work to do.”

The clerk nodded at her in understanding. He knew what would be required.

It was a business of hours to rouse everyone from their cursed sleep. As they passed the people of the castle Anne bent and kissed each in turn. Not a few of them promptly fainted in shock upon learning the truth. The people of their kingdom had lost decades while the world passed them by. She was thankful that apparently the animals of the keep had woken when Margaret had. She didn’t relish the idea of having to kiss all the chickens and cows of the keep!

When all was ready to her specifications, she opened her bag of tricks. It took only a few minutes to prepare herself and then she pulled Kristoff’s pipe from her pocket. She had practiced this part many times on the trip north, refining some of the more difficult bits with Olufela’s advice. She licked her lips and worked her tongue in her mouth, then played the simple tune on the pipe.

All was as it should be.

She walked into King Albert’s chambers. His suite of rooms was in the keep proper, not in the tower with Margaret’s chambers. They were sickeningly opulent, the furniture gilded, and the draperies of his bed and windows sported an excess of fabric - enough to clothe an entire village. But in the passage of years without the meticulous care of servants, the golden decorations darkened and the lavish fabrics became threadbare. Anne thought if she but whispered in the direction of the curtains they would fall to dust.

She shook her head at such extravagances. Even in her mother’s palace in Iwalatan, the riches were only trinkets from across the empire on display to celebrate the peoples under the rule of the Dragon’s Lady. Here in her father’s chamber was no pride of his people, just luxury for his own enjoyment. This was wasteful. This was vanity.

Anne turned towards the bedroom. The bed was wide enough to sleep every inhabitant of the Kammerhund and so deep that it reached waist high on her. She bent forward to peer at the still sleeping figure.

King Albert looked much the same as she remembered. His thick, blonde hair lay tousled on the bed pillows. Lines creased his face about his eyes and on his forehead, much as any man in middling years. He did not look as fearsome to her now as he did when she was a young girl. She contemplated, not for the first time, just letting him sleep on, oblivious to the passing world.

She rolled her shoulders, steeling her nerves, and pulled the shekere from her satchel. Then, thinking of her sister - never of her father - Anne bent and pressed her lips against King Albert’s cheek. When the king opened his eyes, she was already standing at the foot of the bed and playing the instrument.

“Albert, what have you done?” her voice seemed to boom from every corner of the room.

His eyes widened in fright and began to dart about the room searching for some help. The king scrambled back in the sheets and pressed himself against the headboard. “Oluninde!”

Anne maintained a constant cadence on the shekere, the net of shells shimmying over the gourd’s surface.

“ _Witch_!” he hissed. “What magic is this? Guards, guards!” he yelled, but none ran to his side.

“What is the punishment for killing a child, Albert? Shall I take yours in her place?” Her eyes flashed, and lighting could be seen to streak the sky through one of the windows.

“I, I never killed her. _That was a lie!_ And if I had, I had every right as her father,” Albert insisted.

“You took the heir to Iwalatan. You kidnapped a princess. Would you risk your kingdom for such an atrocity?” The people of Schloss Dornbush needed to know the truth, Anne thought.

“ _That_ half-breed? The child is only a bastard, she’s no fit heir to a throne,” he sneered. “I hear she’s dimwitted, anyhow.”

Anne started at that and then shook the _shekere_ with a sharp jerk. Thunder boomed around them and shook the hilltop the castle perched on. _That_ got his attention, and he shrunk back once more.

“There is no translation for _bastard_ in the south, for all children belong to their mothers.” It was true. That much Anne had learned from her mother’s people. “Kidnapping a royal child is an act of war. Are you prepared to face the might of the south?”

“You wouldn’t dare. And if you did, what matter is it to me to lose a few dirty commoners?” asked the king.

His arrogance continued to shock Anne. _Could this man truly have fathered her?_

The king reached over and pulled on a bell rope, but instead of hearing the resounding gong of a summoning bell, the yellow cord frayed and fell apart in his hand. It was then that Albert looked around his room and truly saw the changes around him. He saw the dust. He saw the cobwebs. He saw the tarnished silver and darkened gold. He saw the mildew covering the flagstones.

Albert watched her approach the bed, looming ever larger. The flashes of lightning outside the window illuminated her face in flickers as she grew angrier with every passing moment.

Her father began to tremble and sweat through his purple silk night clothes, but he made one last attempt to save face. “Your daughter is no more fit to rule than a common street urchin. She is fit only to dog the heels of those better bred than her, scrubbing their garderobes and emptying their chamber pots. So do your worst, witch, for you will never see your daughter again.”

And then the king, her father, spat on her.

Abruptly, Anne stilled the _shekere_. Around the room could be heard gasps of horror and astonishment. The people of Schloss Dornbush had been in the royal chambers with her the whole time, masked by her magic. She pulled the pipe from her pocket and played another tune which dropped the glamour that made Anne appear as Oluninde to the king.

“Thank you, _Father_ , for showing the people of Schloss Dornbusch what kind of monarch you are.” Anne gave him her most insolent curtsey.

The king gasped at her and glanced around the room for assistance. “Seize her! Seize the witch!” His face purpled with rage.

The seneschal stepped forth from the ring of castle folk standing about the room. “Your actions served only your self-importance and set into motion events that would curse your kingdom for generations,” the man accused King Albert. “You failed as a steward of our people. This woman you call a _witch_ is the salvation of our people. You are _not_ my king.”

“You are not my king,” said a guardsman.

“You are not my king,” said a seamstress.

“You are not my king,” said a clerk.

Anne stared in astonishment as the people of the castle filed past the king’s bed and pronounced judgment on him. This part she hadn’t anticipated. She had meant only to expose the truth, not unseat a monarch.

Last to approach Albert’s bed was Margaret. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, but Anne could hear the steel in her words.

“You are not my king,” she said with a shaking voice. “And I wish you were not my father. But I cannot deny that your actions brought me the dearest sister and friend I could ask for. For that reason alone, I sentence you to exile in lieu of death, although your behavior amounts to treason.”

Anne saw the moment Albert realized the blonde woman was Princess Margaret grown to adult hood. “Exile me? Exile _me_? Who are you to wield power? You’re nothing but a girl-child, and the only power you have is through who you will marry.”

Margaret reached a hand out to Anne, gripping her fingers tight, and faced her father again. “I am a princess in a broken kingdom, Father. We have no lands, no tithes, no taxes, and no vassals. Any treaties or allies we once had we lost long ago with the curse you brought down on our heads. Any power you once held is a thing of dreams. And the power I hold now is but a fragile thing, a remnant of the love these kind folk once bore a little girl with promise.”

The castle folk arranged themselves to either side of the women, standing firm in their resolve to rebel against their king.

Albert turned to look, _really_ _look_ , at Anne then, his eyes wide with anger and shock. “NO!” he shouted. “I am a _king_!” And with that, the disheveled man in his sweat-stained nightclothes sprang from the bed, hands lunging for Anne’s throat.

Before he could reach her, some guardsmen stepped in front of her and easily wrested Albert’s arms behind him, dragging him from the room. He continued to loose a string of curses at his daughters even as he was pulled through the door and out of their sight.

Anne stood dumb-founded for a moment and then turned to face the castle folk who waited in the bedchamber. They looked at her expectantly. She glanced at Margaret’s face and saw the same anticipation reflected there. She had a moment of disorientation before she realized that she was a different woman returned to Schloss Dornbusch. A serving girl had left ten years ago, but she had returned a leader. _This_. She unknowingly had begun acting as if she were due command, and these people responded by waiting for her next orders. It was baffling and heady and confusing and thrilling all at the same time.

She clapped her hands, rubbing her palms together. “Come, there is much to do,” she said and walked from the chamber, ready to put this unpleasant experience behind her. And to her surprise, or maybe not, they followed and attended to her words.

Some days later, Anne and Margaret were standing atop the battlements, watching the flurry of activity as yet more wagons arrived with food and supplies. The administration of the repairs was well coordinated by Annette the smith, who had left Briar Haven’s forge to Kristoff in the interim. She had brought with her some of the Women’s Council and the town’s men to help the castle staff with adjusting to their situation.

Things were not as simple as that though. Not a few men and women had chosen to follow their king into exile. A clerk, a guard, a stable hand. Too many others that she had difficulty remembering their names. Some had had difficulty accepting the fact of the curse, muttering of a dark woman with dark magicks as they walked through the keep’s gate and down the road. Still others didn’t relish the idea of continuing to serve under an untested woman without a king at her side.

Duhrma, her sister and new Dragon’s Lady, had sent one hundred thousand mithqal’s of gold - almost a full ton - with Sidna’s caravan. _There is nothing I can do to reverse the damage our mother wrought upon your northern people, but perhaps our mother’s gold can help with repairs or supplies_. Duhrma’s words echoed in her mind. Anne knew her sister had been correct, and the gold had done much to hire folk from Briar Haven and purchase the materials needed to set things to rights.

Anne leaned on the crenellations, peering down the road that once had been hidden beneath brambles as the last of the day’s sun gilded the fields beyond the bailey wall. “I don’t know what I thought, Margaret. I think a part of me expected or maybe just wanted our father to leap from the blankets and embrace me in joy, finally recognizing my legitimacy. I knew it wasn’t likely, but his words still stung all the same.”

Margaret leaned over and draped an arm around Anne’s shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Anne. I forget-“

“No, let me finish,” she snapped at her sister. She took a couple of deep breaths, and then grabbed her braid - an old habit now. “I never knew who my parents were, but I knew my place. I think sometimes I was jealous of you. I _know_ I pretended to be the princess and queen when all of you were sleeping under the curse. But when I met Oluninde, you would think my dreams had come true. I _was_ a princess - twice over! And the whole time I walked back to Schloss Dornbusch from Iwalatan, I thought about how _finally_ I had a father and a place where I belonged.”

“You _do_ belong here. You’re my sister! You should be the queen here. You should be the empress of the south.”

“I said stop interrupting me.” Anne shrugged Margaret’s arm off of her shoulder. “I spent a year thinking of wanting King Albert to welcome me home with open arms while at the same time I plotted my revenge. I _wanted_ a place to belong. And these people…your people…I don’t belong here. I already have a place where I belong, with people who always accepted me with no qualms. I belong with Lena in Briar Haven and Karl’s smelly dogs. I belong with Kamunu, carefully tallying the day’s earnings hunched over a wax tablet. I belong with Olufela and his minstrels, plying my trade with pipe and lyre and _shekere_. I belong with people who don’t look down on low born folk. I belong with the people who took in a scared child because it was right, not because of whom her parents were. And even though the folk of Schloss Dornbusch can thank me for rescue, I can’t forget how they treated me.”

Anne’s voice kept rising, and she knew her words began to carry down into the courtyard. Some of the workers had paused to listen, whispering to one another as she continued. Her sister only looked on her with eyes wet with unshed tears; waiting now for what she must know was coming next.

“I made a promise to you Margaret. I promised I would come back and find a way to save you. I made that promise as a servant to her mistress, but I fulfilled that promise as an equal. And I love you - as a friend and a sister. But your people will never be my people. I see it in their eyes. Some look on me still as that half-breed orphan. Others won’t meet my eyes for the shame sits heavily on their spirits for how they treated me as a little girl. Maybe you can help them. Maybe you can guide them to something better. But I already have a family. I have people that welcomed me wholly into their homes, their camp circles, and their hearts. If I am to claim a people for my own - I claim them.”

“You’re leaving me.” Margaret’s voice came as a whisper. “Where will you go?”

Anne didn’t answer at first. She just turned back towards the road and watched as the remnants of the sun finally dipped beneath the horizon. She spent the last ten years working for this. Now that the promise was fulfilled, she made a new promise to herself.

“Where will you go?” her sister asked again, laying her hand over hers on the battlements.

“Everywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! One more chapter to go. Thank you so much for reading. As always, comments are appreciated.


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very thankful to my friend and beta [Yavannie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Yavannie/pseuds/Yavannie), whose help has been invaluable these past months. All mistakes are my own.

The day dawned bright, and the rays of the sun beamed through the counterpane, waking her with their wan light. Aysun stretched, curling her toes in the sheets, and worked a cramp from her calf. In moments, she bounded from the room and raced down the hall to wake her sister.

They ran down the cobbled streets with their sashes streaming behind them. The sounds of the market were so loud that they could probably be heard the next town over. She ran a hand along one bright white wall as they circled down a curved stair and she nearly tripped at the bottom. Her sister Mehtap admonished her for her clumsiness and pointed out that she wouldn’t have tripped if she’d worn shoes.

They were late.

The minstrels had already begun in the square and the two girls had to jostle for place amongst the other children. It seemed as though the whole city had come out for the annual festival, and many of the children sat cross-legged and mesmerized by the colorful tumblers and puppeteers. Aysun craned her neck but was unable to spot her older brother in the crowd. He would be sore later for having missed the performers.

The plaza was paved with smooth, cream-colored bricks and surrounded by open air colonnades topped by arches. Here, the bards had erected a shallow stage in front of the Temple of the Dragon. It was fitting the performers entertained beneath the gaze of the Dragon’s Heir. The figure of a scaled woman bestowing benediction on a crowd of huddled figures was picked out in thousands of tiny gilded tiles on the gleaming wall of the temple.

Mehtap grinned suddenly and pointed out that several tumblers stretched behind the platform as they warmed up for their performance, but Aysun only had eyes for the three on the stage. There was a young man with a drum slung over his shoulder. The taught skin stretched over the instrument was painted with fantastic creatures. She squinted her eyes and picked out a dragon as the central figure on the hide. It was surrounded by leaping hounds and soaring griffons painted all in greens and reds and golds.

The young woman next to him had the same cast to her features, and Aysun decided she must be his older sister or perhaps a near-cousin. The minstrel wore a loose chain around her waist strung with bells. She stood with one foot cocked against her other ankle and bent sideways at the waist. She waited with her fiddle positioned beneath her pointed chin and bow held at the ready as the young man switched his drum for a curiously shaped pipe. When her brother launched into a new song, she began to saw her bow across the strings, spinning and reeling to the music.

Behind both and a little to the side of the platform stood a bent old woman. She leaned on a staff while she shook the _shekere_ with her free hand. Although the old woman kept time, Aysun could see plainly how the woman’s knuckles were swollen and twisted with age. The gnarled staff stood at least a hand taller than her. A long shawl, white with bright embroidery scrollwork, draped over her stooped shoulders. Her hair hung almost to her feet in thick gray braids. The old woman began to tap the end of her staff as counterpoint to the rhythm of her _shekere_ as the two younger minstrels increased the tempo of the song.

She recognized the melody. It was a common teaching ballad at their festivals and a version was sung in the temple each week. She had always loved this tune about how the Dragon’s Heir magicked away the mist and thorns that trapped the sleeping princess and her people.

Sadly, Aysun and Mehtap had come late to the plaza, and the tale was half ended already. The young man with the skirling notes of his pipe stopped playing suddenly and he stood aside to let his sister take center stage as she finished her reel. He began to speak softly from behind her as the fiddle mellowed. Aysun listened closely and hung on the lilting voice of the story teller as he finished the tale.

“…and so Margaret ruled as Queen-Mother of Schloss Dornbusch and Duhrma reigned supreme as Empress and Dragon’s Lady of Iwalatan. Briar Haven and the rest of the northern towns united with the empire of Iwalatan, rich in salt and gold and iron and cloth. The empire was also rich in its cultures and music and people. The independent kingdoms that lay between soon clamored to join in their trade caravans.” The young man slung his hide drum over his chest once more and began to thrum his fingers across the top, stepping to the front.

The young woman with her fiddle dropped her bow and stepped back. Her voice had a smoky quality as she continued over the sound of her brother’s drumming. “Queen Margaret invited Basir, grandson of Duhrma, to be a tutor and instruct her people in the ways of their allies as well as all the history that had passed while they slumbered under the curse. Basir, who also served as ambassador to Margaret’s court, won the heart of the fair haired queen and became her consort in later years. ‘Tis said that their many children fulfilled the dreams of the sorceress Oluninde in uniting the bloodlines of Sauda and Dikeledi.”

The minstrels readied themselves to switch places once more when a voice called out. “What happened to the Dragon’s Heir?”

Aysun peered over the children crowded together on the low benches and found the owner of the voice. It was Miro, the son of the stonemason. He was young still, perhaps only six, and did not know not to interrupt the minstrels. He fidgeted in place, waved his hand at the three bards, and asked his question again.

“What happened to the Dragon’s Heir? What happened to the lost princess?”

The old woman with the _shekere_ raised her staff and thumped it on the platform three times. The younger minstrels, probably her apprentices now that Aysun thought about it, rushed to help her off the stage. She clambered down off the boards and made her way through the crowd of children and settled herself on a bench in the middle of the crowd. There was much shuffling and shoving as all the youngsters tried to sit closest to her, even though many knew the end of this tale. Where Aysun sat, she could see the tremble of the old woman’s hands as she still gripped her staff tight.

The greatmother began her story with a quaver in her voice. “The Dragon’s Heir was a child of Niameh’s line. There’s some that said she was Niameh born again, but she refused the thrones of two nations, ceding them instead to her sisters. But this was not a weakness, for instead she claimed all people as her own. She walked along with them, sitting at their cook-fires, chatting over their market stalls, weaving at their looms, drawing water at their wells. Anne Asaase Afua reigned as empress of all nations but she lived life in amongst you all.”

The master bard rocked on her seat on the bench and pulled her cloak a bit closer about her shoulders. She cleared her throat. “Anne was all-powerful, but alone, as she took her first steps to free a people from a curse, just as Niameh was alone as she took her first steps on this earth. She is the breath in our bodies, the wind in our hair, and the ashes of our dead.”

Behind the crowd, the two apprentice minstrels on the stage lightly shuffled their callused feet on the boards of the stage. Combined with the bell chains on their ankles and at the woman’s waist, it reminded Aysun of spring rains.

“She claimed no husband or wife in her lifetime, but wherever Anne walked, men and women alike loved her well.” The old woman smiled and her gaze seemed to rest far away as if in pleasant memories. “Tales began to spread of traveling minstrels leaving foundlings with the common folk. The people murmured that these were Anne’s children to be fostered among the people. That like Niameh, she needed no husband to give birth, and so these minstrel foundlings were, in fact, the Children of the Dragon. Today, we call them _dragonkin_.”

“Empress Duhrma and Queen Margaret decreed that all homeless children should be taken in with love and care, for wasn’t their very own sister treated as an orphan once upon a time? So began a tradition of the noble houses fostering foundlings as well as the small folk so that no child was left to want nor treated as a thing of pity.” The greatmother looked down as a child fisted his hand in the fold of her robe. Two more children reached out and grabbed her staff beneath her grip.

Mehtap elbowed her where they sat and they exchanged a glance. Their parents had taken in both of them not eight years past when the blood fever swept through the lower market town leaving them both orphaned. And although they were sisters at heart, they could not appear more different in the cast of their features nor their coloring.

The elderly bard continued, but her voice seemed to grow stronger with the telling. “These things all blurred the lines between the common folk, the nobility, the foundlings, and the dragonkin. A time came when you knew not whether your ‘servant’ was better born than you or if a noble lady had been born to a fishmonger’s wife. All were treated with great courtesy out of fear of offending the Children of the Dragon. As years passed, caution became habit and habit became the norm until all nobility and common folk were afforded the same respect.” She grinned, then, and Aysun was shocked to see that the elderly woman still had a bright smile. “I’d like to think that helped bring harmony to our lands.”

“Yes, Greatmother, but what happened to the Dragon’s Heir? Do you know? Wasn’t she lonely in her wanderings?” Mehtap asked. “I know I couldn’t walk away from _my_ sister.”

Aysun laced her fingers with Mehtap’s and waited for the bard to answer. She felt her sister squeeze her hand.

“No, _omobirin_. Anne was not alone. She possessed the magicks of her mother and her mother’s mothers before her, all the way back to Sauda and Dikeledi and Niameh herself. She walked the dreams of her sisters and her children so they might always be together, though they lived many lands apart. It is why you see scores of bards today weave ribbons or cords through their hair, in remembrance of the braids that joined her to those she loved.” The master bard lowered her voice. “It’s also said by some that the dragonkin sprinkled through the land were really her spies. They wore Anne’s hair twined with their own so she might spy on her enemies, passing secrets back to Queen Margaret or Empress Duhrma to help build the empire ever larger.”

“But that’s not what my father said,” Aysun interrupted, surprising herself. “My da said that the Dragon’s Heir gazes on all her people to see that we are well and loved-that she watches through the eyes of others so that none are neglected. My da told me that when you look in the eyes of your neighbor, it is Anne Asaase Afua looking back at you with love.”

“Then your da is very wise, girl, for I feel the same way.”

With that, the old woman leaned upon her staff and rose to her feet. Several little hands, grubby in the way that only children’s hands can be, helped her to her feet. She mounted the platform once more and knocked the top knot of her staff gently behind the ear of the girl with the fiddle. “Enough of the teaching ballads. Give the children a fun song.”

“Yes, Mistress,” said the fiddler. “I thought that Olufela’s Ode might be enjoyable, if it pleases you, even though it is an old melody.” And so the girl raised her fiddle and the boy raised his voice.

 

 

> _In the land of moon and fog_
> 
> _A princess slumbered deep_
> 
> _A wicked curse befell the castle_
> 
> _And kept her in a deathlike sleep._
> 
>  
> 
> _A dragon broke through the ring of thorns_
> 
> _And ventured to the land of salt_
> 
> _Where she searched all through the land_
> 
> _To bring an end, the curse to halt._
> 
>  
> 
> _She found no cure, no prince, no witch_
> 
> _That could bring an end._
> 
> _The dragon flew along the road._
> 
> _Her search began again._
> 
>  
> 
> _The dragon finally landed_
> 
> _To the south in land of gold._
> 
> _There she met a wise woman,_
> 
> _An empress now grown old._
> 
>  
> 
> _Our dragon learned the awful truth_
> 
> _There in the land of sand._
> 
> _The sorceress had lost her pow'r_
> 
> _With which she’d cursed the land._
> 
>  
> 
> _The dragon slept and dreamt again_
> 
> _And in the morning woke._
> 
> _She launched into the sky, her wings_
> 
> _Ached with every stroke_
> 
>  
> 
> _Faster and faster, she flew on_
> 
> _To reach the curséd tower._
> 
> _Finally, she reached the briars,_
> 
> _But the dragon had no power._
> 
>  
> 
> _And so the beast changed form once more_
> 
> _A woman stood instead._
> 
> _She drummed, and piped, and fiddled long_
> 
> _Until the curse had fled._
> 
>  
> 
> _The thorns began to shrivel_
> 
> _And the fog began to swirl._
> 
> _The moon resumed its circuit_
> 
> _Around the waking world._
> 
>  
> 
> _The dragon stormed the castle,_
> 
> _But found the small folk still asleep._
> 
> _She climbed the tallest tower_
> 
> _To find the princess of the keep._
> 
>  
> 
> _The dragon found her still abed_
> 
> _And kissed her maiden there._
> 
> _The princess woke to dragon's touch_
> 
> _And embraced the dragon's heir._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I started out just wanting to expand on a fairy tale I had written for a little girl in my family, and this turned into so much more. I hope you enjoyed this story and I welcome your comments.


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